So I fold the words back into my mind and smile instead. “Nothing,” I reply. “Just glad to be out of class.”
She gives me a sidelong glance, as if she doesn’t really believe me, but she doesn’t push me further. Her arm loops through mine. “Still want to head to the Undercity?” she asks me.
I nod as we head toward the elevators. “I’ve been ready all day,” I reply.
She grins and gives me a wink that she knows always improves my mood. “Good. Because there’s a drone race happening later this week, and at least a hundred thousand corras waiting to be won. I figured we should go enter our bets.”
Drone racing. Gambling. These are dangerous activities in the seediest part of Ross City, but it’s the one place where I feel good about myself. I grin back at her, admiring the way her bobbed hair forms a straight line with her jaw. Then I unhook my backpack from one shoulder and reach into it. I pull out a small, circular tube.
Pressa’s mouth forms an O as she studies it. “Is that what I think it is?” she whispers.
I smile a little. “If you’re thinking it’s a drone engine, then you’d be right,” I reply. “I’ve been working on it for weeks.” Good thing Emerson didn’t dig any farther than my dried flowers. “This time, we don’t have to just place a bet. We can enter the race.”
Pressa shakes her head and grins. “Sometimes I wonder if you belong up here in the Sky Floors,” she says. “You have way more in common with the rest of us down below.”
I don’t answer her as we head into the nearest elevator and startmaking our way down. Maybe she’s right. I don’t fit in up here, in the Sky Floors where everything’s perfect until it isn’t. My heart belongs to the lower floors, the part of this place that hosts things like drone races and gambling. The part that Ross City doesn’t advertise.
The Undercity.
DANIEL
Eden’s not picking up his phone again.
I tap off the virtual ringing icon in my view, swear under my breath, and try calling him one more time.
Maybe the connection’s bad. Iamcurrently in the pockmarked streets of the Undercity, after all, perched in the shadows on top of a crumbling neon sign overlooking a crowded street. This is the lowest rung of Ross City, the ground floor, where sunlight never reaches and where neon signs advertise the rusty jumble of cheap storefronts lining either side of the road.
It’s not like this is the best place to make a call to the Sky Floors.
No answer again.
I take a deep breath and try not to be annoyed. When we first moved here to Antarctica, I promised myself that I’d never lose my temper with Eden. He survived a goddy revolution. He lost our parents and nearly his life.
He’s my little brother. And nothing would ever be worth getting angry with him about, as long as he is alive and healthy.
Still. You’d think a kid could get around to calling his brother back now and then. Maybe he’s hanging out with classmates. I don’t know much about who he talks to these days. Last time I visited him at school, he seemed friendly with some seniors named Jenna and Emerson—but they’re headed into their finals for the year. That means he’s going to be out more, doesn’t it?
The concept of a university, of taking exams without real consequences, is so foreign to me that trying to figure out Eden’s life nowadays gets me nowhere. June would probably understand him better. I wonder for a moment if I could use this as an excuse to call her, get her opinion on how Eden might be feeling.
My thoughts always wander to June. I fiddle idly with a paper clip ring on my left hand, try to force her out of my head, and call my brother one last time.
He doesn’t answer.
I sigh, give up, and turn on the geolocation tracking on him. That’s another feature of Antarctica’s Level system. You can at least find out where someone is.
“Any sign of her?” a voice comes on in my earpiece. It’s from my AIS co-agent, Jessan.
I let Eden’s geolocator keep searching and instead focus back on my job. My eyes scan the bustling marketplace below me. “Not yet,” I mutter.
Jessan sighs over the line. “She’s late. Maybe she’s not heading out today.”
“Give her a few more minutes, yeah?”
“Fine.” Jessan hangs up, and I go back to my watch.
It’s a good thing I’m crouched in the shadows here. People alwaysrecognize me, for one reason or another. My face is the one they’ve seen before on the news, on the wanted posters that used to plaster every goddy JumboTron back in the Republic of America.
Now it’s the one that appears whenever you’ve committed a crime against Ross City. It’s the one you see right before I arrest you.
