I double-check my account. Hacking the Level system is no small feat, but it helps when your brother works for the government and you’ve occasionally glimpsed how his account is set up from the inside. So tonight I’ve got my Level turned off and my identity randomized, and when you glance over my head, you don’t see: EDEN BATAAR WING, LEVEL 54. Instead, it reads: ELI WHITMAN, LEVEL 5.
For all I know, though, Daniel’s found a way around that and is following my location again without telling me. I glance over my shoulder, as if I’ll see him tailing me somewhere in the crowds.
As I turn a corner and hit a darker section of the Undercity, where people with flattened Levels shelter along either side of the streets in rows of tents, I start to feel nervous. Even though I’m dressed in my subtlest clothing, stares dart my way and eyes seem to pierce my back. Something about my demeanor—the hunch of my shoulders, or the way I push my glasses up, or maybe just the fact that I know I don’t belong here—makes me stand out.
Maybe I look like a pawn again, and someone’s going to come at me with a knife and rob me. I shove my hands into my pockets and lower my head farther. I should have asked Pressa to come with me instead of agreeing to meet her there.
As I get closer to the drone race’s starting point, I start to notice crowds of people lining the sidewalks here and there, standing around and waiting, as if for a parade. Money exchanges hands, and excited murmurs fill the alleys. I can tell people are toggling their virtual settings so that they can follow the race through their chips.
The streets get more and more packed until I’m squeezing my way through the throngs. Finally, I stop before what looks like a run-down bar, so tiny that I can barely squeeze through its grated door.
The inside of it is lit with scarlet-neon light. People pack around a bar, behind which a woman leans, eyeing me.
I clear my throat and give her what I hope is a calm look. “Serving any red whiskey tonight?” I ask her. It’s the current password I’d found in my searches.
For a second, I think I got it all wrong, because she doesn’t react. She just stares at me as if I don’t look like the right type of person to be here.
Then she steps around the side of the bar and nods for me to follow her. We walk to the back, where a bathroom door is locked tight with a sign over it that reads: OUT OF ORDER.
She scans a finger in front of the door. It cracks open.
She nods for me to go in, but doesn’t make a move to follow. I give her a quick smile, then step past her and head into the darkness beyond the door. It closes behind me. I’m in some sort of dark, enclosed space. All I can see for a moment is a faint, glowing green light on the door handle. My heart thuds, and I feel a hint of claustrophobia.
Then the ground beneath me shudders. A neon-green light washes over the space, and the wall in front of me slides open with a rusty creak. I pull my shirt up over my nose as the smell of sewage threatens to suffocate me.
I step out of the makeshift elevator into a square plaza fenced in by four skyscrapers, lit by flickering neon lights against the walls and a haze of crimson fog. Pounding music and a roar of voices hits me.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Neon-red bulbs dangle by the thousands from building to building. Vendors selling savory buns and fried meat on sticks jumble near the edges of the square. The walls are lined with lattices of steel support beams, and a giant circuit breaker hangs near where I came in. This looks like it used to be an elevator station under construction at one point that then got torn down and abandoned.
People are packed so tightly into the space that any disaster—a fight, a fire—would turn this place into a death pit. But no one cares. They all gather around a circular clearing in the middle of the plaza, where the racers for tonight are now lining up and preparing their drones.
A giant virtual countdown hovers over the middle of the plaza, turning in my view to match wherever I move.
DRONE RACE: SEMIFINALS
FIRST HEAT COMMENCES IN 10:00 MINUTES
Right below it is the list of racer names for the first heat, updating as each racer checks in to the space.
My false name is up there.
ENTRY 9: ELI WHITMAN
For a moment, I freeze up. The people around me look like they’ve been coming to races like this forever. I, on the other hand, must look like the easiest mark that ever stumbled into the Undercity. My palms start to sweat.
Pressa, I send out a message. I’m here now. Where the hell are you?
Eventually, I catch sight of a stand where people are registering their drones. I walk over to it, trying to ignore the way others are staring at me from the corners of their eyes.
The man behind the stand gives me a skeptical look. “Drone,” he says.
I swing my backpack to my front and unzip it, carefully removing my drone model for him to inspect. He raises an eyebrow at my design. It looks unlike anyone else’s here, with its small, slender shape and the glowing engine attached to its end. I stand back and wait as he holds it up this way and that.
“A little runt of a drone, eh?” he mutters. Finally, he nods at me. “Patron?”
I frown. “A what?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Every racer needs a patron. We need assurance that you can pay for any damage that you cause. Unless you got ten thousand corras lying around, and can be your own.”
Pressa hadn’t mentioned anything about a patron. “I don’t have one yet,” I start to say, glancing around for any sign of my friend, “but I’m on the roster to race. If you look—”
But he’s already shaking his head at me and handing the drone back. “You must be new here,” he says with a laugh. “No patron, no race. I don’t care where your name is.”
“But if you just let—”
Any sympathy for me now leaves his eyes. Annoyed, he waves for me to exit the line. “There are people behind you,” he barks, gesturing for the next person to step up.
“Wait!”
I slacken in relief as Pressa emerges from behind the gamblers and heads to the table. As usual, her persona down here looks completely different from what I’m used to seeing of her at the university and her father’s shop. She’s in a long wig, for one—bright blond, a startling contrast from her black, bobbed hair—and sporting a pair of fake pink glasses that make her eyes look abnormally large. She flashes a frown at the man.
“I’m his patron,” she says, taking out a sealed envelope and sliding it over to him.
He seems to recognize her, because he grunts in acknowledgment before tearing the envelope open. Inside is a stack of corras, clean and crisp. He holds them up to the light, then nods and pockets the envelope.
“You’re official,” he says to me, and barely a few seconds later, he nods up to the racer names displayed in the rotating virtual menu. Over my head, a blue light goes on, indicating me as one of the entries. As if in unison, people around us turn to look at me.
“Do you wait in a corner and just watch me until I look like I’m about to do something stupid?” I mutter to Pressa.
She smiles at me and loops an arm through mine. “I don’t have to wait around very long for that,” she replies. “You’re welcome for saving your ass.”
“Where’d you get ten thousand corras?”