Pru, dealing entertainment across censorship territories for going on two years now, recognized charisma when she saw it. Alex had that in spades, but this was something quieter, more tender: a genuine vulnerability that turned his music into a secret gifted to you alone—yes, you, singular member of this teeming audience—and nobody else. Even recognizing the illusion of intimacy for what it was, Pru felt the song’s yearning ache slip beneath her skin, curling around her heart as the rest of the world fell away.
Pru shut her eyes and let Alex’s music—foreign-tongued, longing and loving and furious—embrace her. Behind her eyelids, for one stupid, fanciful moment, she imagined chrome-scaled dragon wings, unfurled.
* * *
New Columbia Preparatory Academy Student Message Boards
Wednesday, 8:30 P.M.
READWEEKWEEDWEEK: yo, did anyone else catch that secret concert Alex Lamarque put on?? the school’s most elusive yet popular sweetheart rears his pretty, brooding head, and how!
SANSMERCI: he & park hijacked the whole auditorium, like some guerrilla theater bullshit. admin’s gonna be pissed. I hear park deliberately recorded & leaked the show past firewalls into inc. territory. better hope good old uncle gabriel can fix this one, ’cause UCC won’t take that shit lying down.
VIKTORIAN: lol, u sure it was a concert? the way it’s blowing up the forums, sounds more like they hired a stripper to give Headmaster Goldschmidt a lap dance like the senior class social VP did at school assembly 2 years ago.
SNOOZE_LOOZE: o man, I remember that! now THERE’S some shit that should have gone viral in UCC territory, haha. how do u like THAT for censorship, incorporated dickheads.
* * *
PRU DIDN’T REALLY BREATHE easy again until she mumbled her excuses to Anabel and slipped up the auditorium stairs to its rooftop, above the press of an excitedly gathering afterparty, into the cool night air. Below Pru’s feet, beneath nightfall’s shadow, the sprawling buildings of the school’s neatly manicured, ivy-covered campus looked like a fantasy novel. A gentle yellow glow spilled from the windows, like a kinder echo of the distant, watchful lights of the Barricade sentinels. Pru lifted her head skyward. Surrounded by so much artificial light, the stars were barely visible tonight, but she could still make them out, the faintest suggestion of a constellation. Resting her back against the auditorium’s rooftop, Pru, ears still pulsing with a drumbeat’s ghost, breathed and breathed.
Somewhere out on the city limits, a mechanical grumble crescendoed into a faint roar. Pru sighed. Vehicular lanes probably malfunctioning again. Automating everything did have its pitfalls.
“I didn’t think anyone else knew about this spot,” said someone behind her.
Pru twisted her head around as best she could. Standing at the opposite edge of the roof was Alex Lamarque, shirt sleeves cuffed, hands tucked in his trouser pockets. His face, bronze-cast in the half-light, had gone a bit red in the cheeks. Probably from spending the past hour belting into a mic. Pru tried to ignore the sudden, unwelcome pounding of her heart.
“Everyone needs a people-watching perch,” she said.
One corner of his mouth tipped up, deepening a dimple. “Or a people-escaping perch.”
“Hey, you said it, not me.”
Alex, to Pru’s great alarm, took a seat beside her. He smelled like subtle, expensive cologne, layered over stage lights and sweat. “Anabel seems to think you know a thing or two about escapes.”
“Oh my god,” groaned Pru. “For the last time, I’m not taking uppers.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of drug she meant.”
Pru swiveled toward him. Up close like this, he seemed less like a fever dream and more like one of the countless good-looking, well-coiffed young men who populated prep school campuses throughout the Barricade cities. Something about Alex’s rendition of Standard Preppy Hot threw Pru off, though. The sharp cut of his jawline below those soft dark eyes kept catching her gaze, an unexpected edge to his beauty.
“Dude,” said Pru, “if I did drugs, I would fail all my exams. Anabel’s great, but you guys are kind of a class apart, you know? I don’t have a Gabriel Lamarque or some terrifying military Park cousin to bail me out if I take too many uppers, or flunk my classes, or stage illicit concerts full of banned music in the school auditorium. Was that seriously your Modern Politics II project? You couldn’t just write some essays like the rest of us?”
“Essays preach. No one likes being preached at. But pretty much everyone likes hearing good music.” His gaze, cast outward toward the city skyline, was so dark, the irises were indistinguishable from the pupils. “Isn’t that why the Partition Wars were fought in the first place?”
“That’s reductive as shit, and you know it,” snapped Pru, before she could stop herself. “The Partition Wars were fought because back in the day, some warmongering asshole of a politician from the good old US of A got a load of the arms race hysteria taking over the world, and said, ‘Hey, you know what’s a good way to make a ton of money by screwing over the plebes? Cornering the continental market on weaponized mechs.’ Supply and demand.”
The Barricade walls, aglow with those familiar sentinel lights, swam bright in Pru’s field of vision. She didn’t dare look Alex’s way, but she felt the steadiness of that quiet, black-eyed gaze boring into her. Why couldn’t she seem to shut up? “That politician, the one who calls himself Executive General now? His private company was just that, once upon a time—private. It only gained power because North America chose to buy what they were selling. Don’t you get it? Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, we created UCC Inc. The Incorporated didn’t start banning books or languages or music until after we decided we just couldn’t live without their mechs and guns, and by then, we were too far gone to give a shit about free thought or free speech or whatever your little concert was about.”
Alex’s answering laugh, quiet and sudden, startled her. Pru’s shoulders went up, braced for mockery, but all she heard was mirth. “You know your history.” He sounded delighted.
Pru scowled over the burn of her cheeks, which was quickly evolving into an alarming warmth in the pit of her belly. She wasn’t used to delighting people, and she certainly wasn’t used to delighting boys like Alex Lamarque. It left her feeling off-kilter. “Yeah, well. Some of us have scholarships to keep.”
The Lamarque boy shrugged. “So you get it better than most, then.”
“Get what?”
“All of this.” Alex gestured broadly with one of those elegant performer’s hands, the hands he’d inherited from men who’d built the Barricade Coalition. “The concert. The music. Why it matters.”