“Give her a few more minutes, yeah?”
“Fine.” Jessan hangs up, and I go back to my watch.
It’s a good thing I’m crouched in the shadows here. People always recognize me, for one reason or another. My face is the one they’ve seen before on the news, on the wanted posters that used to plaster every goddy JumboTron back in the Republic of America.
Now it’s the one that appears whenever you’ve committed a crime against Ross City. It’s the one you see right before I arrest you.
My name used to be Day, the boy from the streets of the Republic. The fugitive who unwittingly started a revolution.
Now, though, I’m Daniel Altan Wing, of the Antarctica Intelligence Service. My job is to hunt down the worst criminals in Ross City. Here, apparently, I’m the law.
Pretty ironic for me, yeah?
Unlike other AIS agents, I’m kind of a fluke. I grew up in the grungy, broken streets of Lake. I stole and fought and scraped by with the worst of them. I used to be the most-wanted criminal in the Republic, a street rat who somehow got the credit for making a government crumble and rebuild itself. I know what it’s like to live in the worst places in the world.
Most of the others I work with didn’t grow up like that. Certainly not my co-agents, Jessan and Lara. They’re Antarcticans, born and raised here in the glitzy, hyper-advanced, technological wonderland of Ross City. So they tend to treat me with a sense of curiosity and awe.
What’s it like, they ask me with wide eyes, to live in a world like the Republic?
I usually shrug off the question. Life in the Republic is a nightmare that I’d prefer to leave in the past.
If anyone from my Republic days saw me now, they’d probably laugh. I don’t look anything like how I used to—my hair long and tied back into a knot, my cap secured tightly to obscure my features, my clothes worn and grungy from the streets. Now I’m wearing a sharp black suit and sleek black collar shirt and polished shoes, and my hair’s cut short and wild. I still can’t get used to it, so I run my hands through my hair all the time. By the end of the day, it looks like a goddy disaster zone.
I wonder what June would think of me. Then again, I wonder what she’d think of a lot of things.
My leg’s starting to fall asleep, so I shift my crouch and keep waiting. Today, we’re down here tracking a woman who works for Dominic Hann, one of the most dangerous criminals in the Undercity.
Me, Daniel Altan Wing, tracking a criminal. Sometimes the thought makes me want to crack up.
But Dominic Hann isn’t anything like me. He isn’t some kind of vigilante fighting for justice or for his family. He’s a killer, cold and merciless.
In the past two years, Hann has become the most notorious name in the Undercity’s crime circles. He’s left bodies hanging in the middle of intersections, gutted and mutilated. He runs illegal racing rings down here. He gives out loans to anyone not living in the Sky Floors, to people with low Levels who are desperate and hungry, and then comes for them and their families if they can’t pay him back with double the amount.
No one who’s crossed paths with Hann seems to want to talk about him. It’s been hard to gather info.
Some people ask me why I chose to work in such a dangerous job after everything that’s happened to me. I’m not sure, actually. Maybe it’s because the thought of someone terrorizing the poor down here reminds me too much of my past. Maybe it’s because this is the world I know, and crossing paths with danger is something I’m good at. Not that I like being familiar with all this.
The Undercity is a far cry from the gleaming luxury of the Sky Floors. This is where the poorest people in Ross City are. Spilled garbage and rusted scooters stripped of parts litter the intersections down here. Crowds of people stream by underneath me like a tide of ants.
Through my vision, I can see their virtual Levels hovering over their heads. LEVEL 6. LEVEL 10. LEVEL 14.
My gaze settles on a few homeless people crouched against the walls, begging idly for spare change. Level 0 hovers over their heads. People with Level 0 have no rights at all. They can’t rent housing. They can’t take the trains. They barely have the right to rest in the streets.
You can work your Level up, of course. That’s the whole point of this system. Over time, some people in the lowest floors have been able to level up into the Mid Floors and get access to better food, housing, and transportation. But pulling yourself up that way takes an overwhelming amount of work. Most never make it out.
Ross City is still a better place than the Republic’s ever been. What advanced nation doesn’t have some poverty? At least these people have never been subjected to the Republic’s Trials or the Colonies’ stifling corporations.
But as far as I’ve seen, no place in the world treats their lowest rungs well. That’s why I hate being in the Undercity. It’s too much like life in Lake, going hungry and sleeping in alleys. Every time I come down here, I end up having nightmares.
People may think of me as some kind of shining hero. But honestly? All I really wanted in the first place was to protect my family.
Suddenly, I tense. My posture straightens. My gaze fixates on a woman who has just emerged from the bodega underneath my neon sign. She glances furtively behind her, then merges into the crowd with a shrug.
I tap my ear once. “Time to go,” I say to Jessan, then hang up and rise.
I shrink farther back into the shadows of the building, slide off the neon sign, and start inching along the second-story ledge. Down below, the woman’s moving surprisingly fast. If I wasn’t specifically tracking her, I would have lost her in the crowds.
My feet move with the assurance of someone who’s done this a thousand times before. I hop between ledges to another building, then another, my figure never emerging from the shadows. My fingers search instinctively for the next crevice in the walls to grip.
Up ahead, the woman turns down a narrow side street and makes her way through a food market. I stop short of the turn and cut instead through the back side of the buildings, then shimmy down from the second-story ledge to land in an alley leading out to the market.
Smoke from open grills lingers in the air, layering the street here in haze. I keep the woman’s light-brown hair in sight as I hurry from one alleyway to the next. At least the people here are so preoccupied with hawking food that none of them notice a ghost slipping behind the stalls, a shadow moving among them.
Gradually, I edge closer. The woman looks back every few minutes, like clockwork. After a while, I kick off against the wall in an alley and move up to the third floor. My speed picks up. A series of laundry lines connect the next building with the one I’m currently on—I step onto the line, crouch to grab it with my hands, then use my momentum to swing down to the second floor.
Now I’m just a few paces behind her. Her movements are quick and nervous, as if she’s sensed that someone may be watching her. My eyes flash briefly to the buildings around me. Jessan and Lara should be on their way, too, closing the trap around her.
The woman abruptly darts into what looks like a dead end. I hop into a second-floor balcony and swerve around the corner of the block after her. When I reach the alley, I see her about to slide through a narrow corridor at the end of it—but Jessan’s already there at the other side. She steps out of the shadows, wearing the exact same black outfit as me, and points a gun at the woman.