The woman whirls around to try and run back the way she came, but I’m already there. In one move, I leap from the second-story balcony, grab the edge of a sign, and swing myself down.
I land right in front of her and pop up onto my feet, my hands in my pockets. “I don’t think so,” I say.
She throws a punch at me, but I step to one side and easily dodge her. Cuffs are already in my hands—as she stumbles past me, carried forward by her own momentum, I seize one of her arms and pull it behind her back. I snap one handcuff against her wrist, then the other.
“Alexandra Amin?” I say through gritted teeth as she struggles against my grip.
She doesn’t answer, but there’s a desperation to her moves that betrays who she is.
I allow myself a small smile as Jessan and Lara both approach me now. Jessan sighs and claps her hands together, while Lara runs a hand across the smooth, tight bun knotted high on her head.
“About time,” Jessan mutters as she places a call to the AIS’s headquarters. “This one was elusive.”
“Keeps our jobs interesting, yeah?” I reply to her with a lift of my eyebrow.
Lara barks out a laugh at that.
We’ve been tracking this woman for a month. She’d reportedly been Dominic Hann’s personal assistant, gathering info for him and helping him run messages down here in the Undercity. Our intel on her told us she grew up with him and was about his age.
She’s a lot younger than I thought she’d be. I remember the rumors about Dominic Hann himself, supposedly the youngest crime lord in Ross City, and wonder what other gossip about him might be true.
This will bring us one step closer to hunting him down. I start to recite the woman’s rights to her.
“You have the right to be judged before a court of Antarctican residents in addition to the Antarctican Level system. Before you stand trial, you have the right to—”
She twists around in my hands and gives me a wild, terrified look. “I have a daughter,” she whispers to me. “Her name is Ashley Amin. Don’t let Hann punish her because I’ve been caught. Please.”
I blink, taken off guard. “Nothing will happen to your family,” I tell her. My voice turns low and steady. I can hear the fear in her words. “I promise you. We just need your help.”
That’s when I notice a light foam building at the edges of her lips. Her skin has turned ashen and sweaty, and I realize the trembling of her limbs isn’t just from fear. She turns those wide eyes back on me again. Her gaze sears straight through me.
“Don’t let him hurt my daughter,” she gasps, foamy spittle flying. “Don’t let him.” She keeps repeating the words deliriously.
I curse and glance at Jessan. “Call for help,” I say. “She’s poisoned herself.” Jessan taps on something in her view without hesitation.
My stare whips back to the woman. I shake her once as her eyes start to glaze over. “I’ll protect your daughter. Where can we find Hann?” I demand. “What’s his next project?”
The woman’s head lolls to one side. Nearby, Jessan is calling for an ambulance.
“Drone races,” the woman finally whispers, her voice so quiet now that I barely catch it.
“Drone races?” I say. “Where?”
But her eyes roll back, and she goes limp in my arms. I shake her again, but her body has stopped trembling. When I touch my fingers to her throat, I can’t find a pulse.
I’m no stranger to dead bodies, of course. I’d seen my fair share ever since I was a kid—after all, I’d been left for dead myself by the Republic and had to crawl my way out of a lab’s mortuary when I was ten years old. I’d played dead for years on the streets of Lake, had seen my own mother and brother slaughtered, had witnessed plenty more deaths when the war broke out in earnest between the Republic and the Colonies.
But that has never numbed me. Every time I come face-to face with death on this job, I feel the same sickening despair settle deep in my stomach. The same sense of repulsion and grief.
This is my fault. I shouldn’t have questioned her so severely. I should have checked to make sure she wasn’t swallowing some kind of poison. I should have stopped her.
Now she’s dead, and we’re left with barely a thread of info about Hann. I lay the woman on the ground and slowly push myself back onto my feet as Jessan and Lara pat down her lifeless body.
What kind of man is Hann, to inflict such deep fear in his assistants that they’d rather kill themselves than be captured? What would Hann have done to this woman if she’d lived?
The blare of the ambulance arrives at the alley’s intersection, and in a daze, I look on as two people clad in white rush to the body. Lara walks up to me and folds her arms.
“Drone races, eh?” she asks.
I nod. “If anyone finds out when the next one is,” I reply, “don’t let them shut it down yet. We’ll be there, if Hann’s going to show his face.”
Lara nods. “Too bad about this one,” she says, shaking her head. “I felt a little sorry for her.”
“We wouldn’t have to feel sorry for her if the Level system was fair,” I mutter.
She sighs in exasperation. “Not this again.”
“People like this work for Hann because they don’t have a choice.”
“Hey, you want to argue about it, take it up with Min.”
Min Gheren, the AIS’s director. I’ve brought it up before—not that anyone wants to hear it. So I just shrug and give Lara a sidelong look. “If you actually think that’ll do any good, I’ll talk to her. I’ll even dress in a costume and do a skit.”
We watch as hospital workers cover the woman with a cloth. At least bodies here are treated with some semblance of respect. A memory flashes through my mind, the old trauma of waking up in a sea of bodies, of dragging myself out while clutching my bleeding, ruined knee that had been experimented on.
“Are you all right, Daniel?” Jessan asks me as she peers at my face. I hadn’t even noticed her come up to me.
“I’m fine,” I reply, shaking the memory off. Already, I know what my dreams tonight will be about. The sooner we can get out of the Undercity and back to the Sky Floors, the better. I can’t stand this goddy place anymore.
As we turn around and start to head back to the main street, a virtual alert pings in my view. It’s a floating icon of Eden, with a glowing green circle around it. When I tap on it, a map pops up with a location dot.
Guess the system’s finally tracked my brother down.
I stop short, then narrow my eyes to study it more closely. “Oh, hell no,” I mutter to myself.
Beside me, Jessan frowns. “Hell no what?” she says.
The location dot’s blinking not far from where we currently are. Eden’s not hanging out up in the Sky Floors at all. He’s here in the Undercity.
EDEN
Drone races are illegal, technically.
If you’ve ever been to one, you know why. Basically how it works is that a total of a dozen racers, who each brings their own flying machine, compete in races that take place all over the Undercity. The drones zip through the air and along the narrow, crowded streets down here, going fast enough to kill a person or destroy the side of a building. They have no permits to fly. They don’t get permission to set up a trail through the streets. The gambling that happens over them is all cash, so the government can’t tax or trace it. Still, it’s an exciting sight. People will gather to watch them shoot by until the Level system catches on—promoting disruptive behavior!—and the police come to break it up. Even then, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where the race’s starting point was and catch those responsible for organizing the whole thing.