Pressa helps me to my feet. “Are you out of your mind, attacking someone like those guys on the last day of uni? You’re gonna get more point deductions, you know, if his parents file charges and the court agrees with them.”
But the memory of what had happened to John is burned too deeply into my thoughts for me to care. I swing my bag back over my shoulder and start stalking toward the exit again. “What does it matter, anyway?” I mutter. “If the system’s rigged from the start?”
Pressa doesn’t argue with that. She sighs and rests her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she says, her gaze distant.“Someday, we’re all gonna get out of here. Find adventure and happiness somewhere else.”
In gratitude, I touch her hand in return. At least there’s one person in my life who seems to understand, and of course she’s from the Undercity.
“You sure you still want to go to the drone race finals?” she says as we step out through the university’s double doors. “Maybe tonight’s not the best night for you to head down to the Undercity. Take some time and cool off, you know?”
But cooling off is the last thing I want to do. I’m always the one cooling off, shaking free. The thought of John’s execution plays over and over again. I have to go. Ineedto. If I don’t, my mind will burst.
“No,” I reply. “I’ll be there.”
DANIEL
My heart’s still hammering from my evening with June by the time I step out of the elevators and into the streets of the Undercity. My lips still burn from our kiss. A million thoughts run through my mind, and I find myself cursing silently at everything I did.
What a goddy idiot I am. Why didn’t I just tell her exactly how I felt? What kept stopping me in the moment? So what if she doesn’t feel the same way? Am I such a coward that I’d rather not know?
I sigh, indulging in my bad mood as I shove my hands in my pockets and hurry through the grungy streets. If I let myself, I could almost pretend that I’m back walking through Lake at night. Maybe nothing’s changed at all since June and I first got together all those years ago.
By the time I arrive on the scene in the darkest district of the Undercity, there must be at least half a dozen AIS drone vehicles blocking the intersection, their flashing lights painting the buildings in alternating washes of red and yellow, adding to the mess of colors from the neon signs hanging overhead. Jessan and Laraare already here, and when they spot me, they wave me over with grim faces. Some distance away, I see Min Gheren, the AIS director, talking in low voices with some of the police. She and I exchange a brief look of greeting.
“What took you so long?” Jessan asks me as I approach them. “You in the middle of a date or something?”
I glare at her as we walk.Yeah. Only my first kiss in ten years with a girl I’m crazy about. “Something like that,” I mutter back. “What happened here?”
“You’ll see,” Lara interjects from my other side.
The street is crowded with curious onlookers, and police and AIS agents alike keep telling people to get back behind the barricades. The pockmarked street is littered with broken glass, and burn marks against the sidewalks and the walls tell me there was some kind of explosion here. Already, the name hangs unspoken in the air—I can see it in the tense faces of my fellow agents, the way they’re taking extra precautions. This is Dominic Hann’s work.
Then we reach the crime scene, and I halt in my steps.
In the middle of the intersection lies a body laid out so purposefully that there’s no question this was intentional. It’s been sliced open. The face is unrecognizable. Beside me, Jessan and Lara look away from the vicious wounds that lace the corpse. I look on, my heart beating rapidly. An ugly flashback emerges from the dark corners of my mind now, the memory of bodies piled next to me as I woke up among them, terrified and in pain.
The memory is so vivid that I barely register Min coming over to stand beside us. Her lips are folded into a grim line as she studies the body with us.
“It’s him, yeah?” I say to her in the beat of silence that follows. “He did this?”
Min nods toward the telltale red handkerchief tied to the corpse’s ankle. “And he wanted us to know it,” she replies.
The kind of cruelty that Dominic Hann inflicts on his victims is so sharply reminiscent of what the Republic used to be like, what Commander Jameson used to do, that I feel an ominous weight on my chest. This isn’t just the work of a sadistic criminal. This is manipulation, someone trying to send a message. Someone threatening the city with his power.
“Who was he?” I ask as I bend down beside the body. “Do we know yet?”
Lara nods. “A councilman in the President’s inner circle.”
This stops me cold. The President’s inner circle. My eyes go back to the mutilated figure before us. Most of Hann’s past attacks have been against people who couldn’t repay his debts, but an act like this is bold beyond belief. Had this councilman owed him money too? It’s possible. But this isn’t a regular citizen. He had bodyguards. All kinds of security attached to his account.
If Hann was able to do this to a prominent councilman in a coordinated attack, then he’s not only growing more confident, he’s got more connections in powerful places than I thought.
“How did it happen?” I ask.
Jessan runs me through what they already know: that the councilman had gone missing earlier today; that he’d been driven here and dumped at the intersection still alive; that he had then been set on fire. I wince at each graphic detail. My attention goes briefly to people sitting on the curbs now, being interrogated by the police.Probably nearby storeowners, some who might’ve witnessed everything happening.
“And they still managed to get away?” I ask when Jessan finishes.
She shrugs, and Lara nods at the scorched walls. “They seem like they struck fast and hard. It’s not their first time at this game. It’s just the worst one yet.”
