“Fancy running into you again, yeah?” I murmur to myself, feigning the casual, flirtatious tone I try to have around her. I shake my head. I don’t want her to think I’m an idiot. “Seems like we’re always bumping into each other on the street,” I rephrase, but grimace. I try out a few other phrases.
“Welcome to my new neighborhood.”
“If you need a guide around the city, I’m pretty free today.”
“Any plans with your Elector tonight, or can I steal you for dinner?”
I scowl, embarrassed and grateful that no one else is around to see me talking to myself. I’ve never had trouble talking to a girl before. Why am I working myself up into such a panic?
I shift my footing against the ledge and start reciting things I’ve been working on telling her all week, memories of us that I’ve been working hard to recollect.
“Remember the time when you taught me how to fight?” I murmurto an imaginary June beside me, a sly grin on my face. “You had a fever from being Patient Zero for a plague, and you still beat me up.”
Honestly, the memory is vague for me. Most of them are. I remember the fight, recall June teaching me how to space my footing and how to protect my chin. But I don’t quite remember where we were, or why. I don’t remember what happened after she tripped me. There was a long, dark tunnel. Sweat beaded her brow.
If I mention it to her, she might help me fill in the gaps of that memory.
“Or the time when you wore that scarlet dress? You were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. Still are.”
That memory, too, is like a blurred photo. There were glasses of champagne and glittering chandeliers. There was the vision of June in that stunning red gown, her hair clipped high and thick on her head. We stood in a room lit only by moonlight, and for some reason, I’d walked away from her. Why would I ever do that?
I recite other fragments of memories. Her face, wet and glistening, as we crouched in a raging storm. Us, huddled together under a burlap sack in a rolling train car. Me, kissing her, pulling her to me, brushing strands of hair away from her face. Me, painstakingly twisting a pair of paper clips together and giving the ring to her. Her, doing the same for me in return.
There are a million pieces of us scattered through my memory, moments tiny and insignificant to everyone else in the world except for me.
I fall into silence and go back to staring out at the city. SuddenlyI’m aware of how small I am against its backdrop, nothing more than a shadow in the night, lost in the sea of lights.
Maybe she doesn’t remember any of this, either. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering. I look down, gathering my courage, taking in deep breaths to undo the knot coiled tight in my chest.
It doesn’t matter. If anything, it’ll have been worth it to tell her that I know we had something special.
EDEN
I don’t know exactly when drone racing started. Decades ago, I think, in some other country, during a time when a game had supposedly taken the world by storm. All I know is that when Pressa first took me to one of the matches—when I saw the drones’ colorful streaks light up the air—I was hooked.
Now I pull my hood farther down over my head and hurry through the night markets of the Undercity. Where the Sky Floors of Ross City are awash in virtual murals, the scenes down here have the grit of reality. At this hour, everything is bathed in neon—flickering red and yellow signs hanging over crumbling stores and barred motels, trails of neon bulbs dangling over the menagerie of market stalls that are still as crowded as they are during the day. Everyone keeps their head down as they shove their way through the smoky streets. No one pays attention to me.
Tonight I’m passing through the area of the Undercity that’s usually teeming with criminals. Conmen. Gamblers and thieves, drug dealers and mafiosi. The Level system starts to break down here, where the majority of people have hacked accounts. Numbers and namesdon’t float over most heads. And when violence and murder break out, there are no points deducted, no alarms sent digitally to the police.
This is where you go if you need to take out a loan in a hurry, to temporarily bring your Level up high enough to be allowed to use a bus, or to buy medication that’s off the official market. People down here will do it for you, hacking your system so that you Level up—but for an exorbitant price. If you can’t pay that price back after your Level goes back down to normal… well, a lot of desperate people go missing all the time, their disappearances uninvestigated by an uninterested country.
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 andlower 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.
