“Is that why you come down here? To pretend you’re something you’re not?”
“That’s what you think?” Eden asks. “I go to the Undercity to play at being poor?”
“I’m saying I hate it when you put yourself in danger when you don’t ever have to.”
“Maybe our definitions of danger are different.”
“Excuse me if I thought you looked like you needed some help back there.”
Eden’s gaze pierces me. “You tracked me with the geolocator, didn’t you?”
I hesitate for just a fraction of a second, but it’s long enough to give him the answer. He makes a disgusted sound and turns away. “I thought I disabled it,” he mutters.
I swallow my rising annoyance. Disabling a geolocator should be impossible, so of course Eden was figuring out some way to hack it.
“The city’ll fine you for that if they find out,” I tell him. “How many times are you gonna make me cover for you?”
“Like you’ve always been a law-abiding citizen.”
Behind his glasses, Eden’s irises have their faint purple tint in the light, the color that never entirely faded since he recovered from the plague. It’s my constant reminder of what it was like to almost lose him, what it could be like again if I’m not careful.
“I used to break the law because I had to,” I say coldly. “What are you breaking it for?”
Eden turns to face me fully. “You want to know the real reason I was in the Undercity today?” he says. “Because it reminds me of Lake. When I walk down there, I’m home. All that smoke and grease and grime, the rags and barred windows … I feel safer down there than I do anywhere else in this city. When I’m there, I think of John and Mom.”
I can tell there’s more he’s not telling me, but my temper sharpens at his mention of our mother and brother. “How about you don’t bring them into this?”
But Eden doesn’t stop. “Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten where you come from. When you’re in the Undercity, it’s like you can’t wait to leave it behind.”
He has no idea how wrong he is. How often I used to do exactly what he’s been doing. I try to remind myself that Eden never saw the way I used to wander aimlessly down the streets of Lake. Back when I’d first been accepted into the Republic’s inner circles, when I was working with June but still felt like an outsider at all the Republic’s goddy balls and banquets … I’d walk the quiet streets of my old neighborhood and take in the rust and the grime. The humble homes and dirty coasts.
But Eden doesn’t remember that. He was too young. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to crawl your way out of that kind of life, to want to keep your younger brother from ever having to see what you’ve seen, endure what you’ve endured. I took him here to get him away from Lake. But he keeps ending up down there anyway.
And I get it. The corner of my heart that’s still Day, the boy from the streets, begs me to explain that to him.
Instead, I say, “It’s because I don’t ever want to walk those streets again. That’s our past, not our future. We didn’t move all the way here just to go back to that. And yet you’re in the Undercity every other week.”
Eden crosses his arms over his chest. “I can’t spend an hour away from home before you ask where I am. I can’t stay out a second past midnight before you come searching for me. Soon I’ll be working for the Republic. Remember? I have a life that’s completely separate from yours.”
“Forgive me if our past has made me a little paranoid about your safety.”
“Daniel.” For an instant, Eden’s voice softens. “I know. Believe me. But it’s not up to you to watch my back every second of my life. You can’t always know where I am. I’m not twelve years old anymore.”
“Well, to me, you’ll always be twelve.”
Eden flinches as if I’ve hit him. I suddenly notice that he’s been arguing eye to eye with me. When did Eden get so tall? Has it really taken me this long to notice? Then the initial sting leaves his expression. He looks away from me and out through the glass, back down at the Undercity far below us.
The elevator finally reaches our floor. Eden steps out first and doesn’t look back. “No need to follow me,” he calls over his shoulder. “I know the way home. Or did you want to supervise me through the front door?”
And before I can protest, he’s left without me, his figure fading down the hall.
EDEN
Daniel doesn’t come home until late that night. I’m in my room, working by lamplight on my perpetual engine machine, when I hear the alarm ding over our front door, followed by a pleasant, automated voice over the speakers installed into our walls.
“Welcome home, Daniel Wing.”
Out in the living room, I hear my brother take off his shoes, then the sound of the refrigerator door opening and the pouring of a glass of water. Instinctively, I breathe a sigh of relief and relax my shoulders. Then I turn off my own tracking of his geolocator. My brother may be overly paranoid about me, but he’s the one with the dangerous job that he never talks to me about. How many hours has he worked today? What kind of mission is requiring him to pull these late nights?
I don’t leave my room to greet him. Our argument from earlier still rings fresh in my mind, and I’m not about to be the first one to cave. Instead, I hunch lower over my machine and keep working, half listening to Daniel in the kitchen. He seems to drink his water, then sets the glass down with a clink and opens the fridge door again. I’d pulled his dinner out of the freezer and into the fridge to thaw. He wouldn’t have remembered to do it earlier, and he won’t remember now that he never did it.
It’s one of those small things left over from our Republic days: his spotty memory. He remembers things that happened when we were kids, or from decades ago. But sometimes he can’t recall a place he was just at several minutes earlier. Or a name. A face. A task.
Physical reminders can sometimes help trigger a lost memory for him, and occasionally I’ll catch him just standing there with a thoughtful frown on his face, struggling to place the feeling of déjà vu that a familiar street sign or narrow alley has awakened in him.
He takes daily medication for it and runs several programs on his Level system that pop up constant reminders for him. I try to make up for the rest of the times when things slip through the cracks. But it makes his job doubly precarious. I have enough nightmares about him never coming home. So I keep a constant eye on his location and his daily habits.
Well, to me, you’ll always be twelve.
The words make my temper flare again, and I go back to working on my perpetual energy machine with a vengeance.
It’s a smooth, elegant design, a small ring of a battery that I now fit with a coil of wire around it. Beside it sits my drone, which I’ll soon attach to the engine. The race notice from Pressa sits folded in my pocket. I check the time—nine o’clock. Just a couple of hours left before I head off to see her.
A light knock sounds against my door.
I don’t respond. Daniel knocks again, and I half expect him to call through the door for me to open it. But he doesn’t. I can almost picture him standing there, leaning casually against the frame, his shirt rumpled and a plate of food in his hand.