His words send a chill through me.How does he know that?
“Thanks,” I mutter, the word thick with sarcasm.
“I can tell you’re no stranger to tense situations,” he says. “I’m guessing that’s from your days back in the Republic.”
I watch him as he lifts a forkful of steaming fish to his lips. “I had my share of moments,” I finally reply.
He looks up briefly at me from his meal. “I can respect that. News about what was happening in the Republic back then was sparse, but I followed it. It was a worthy cause, what you and your brother fought for.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s baiting me, praising my brother while he keeps him locked up in some other room. “What does someone like you know about what we went through?” I say.
“Your family survived based on the whim of your government. Isn’t that true? Your brother was someone like me. An underdog. A rebel. A wanted criminal. I understand, more than you know, what it means to be under the authority’s thumb.”
“Except my brother fought for the people,” I reply. “And as far as I know, you sound like you take advantage of those down here in the Undercity.”
He doesn’t look offended by my words. Instead, he bows his head and smiles grimly. “Iamone of those down here in the Undercity,” he replies. “What happens down here has directly affected me all of my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I’ve been very fair to you,” he says. “You are, understandably, worried about your brother. And while you’ve told me many things about yourself, you still don’t know much about me. So I’m going to make a deal with you.”
“What kind of deal?” I mutter.
He puts his fork down and laces his fingers together, then givesme a steady look. “I’m going to let your brother go,” he says. “If you finish helping me install your engine on our machine.”
I wasn’t expecting him to saythat. “You’re what?” I blurt out.
“I’m going to let him go,” he repeats. “I told you that none of this was about him, and that my only interest in him was to find a way to get to you.” He holds a hand out at me. “But here you are. You’ve demonstrated your talent already by what you’ve done here.” He leans back in his chair. “So I’m going to do what I promised myself I would. I’m going to release him.”
He must be lying to me. It doesn’t make any sense for him to let Daniel go, not when he could keep using my brother against me. “How can I even trust that you’d do such a thing?” I ask.
He nods. “Because I’ll show you,” he replies. “I’ll send you a live feed of him being released.”
I shake my head, confused and wary. “I don’t understand.”
Hann sighs, then leans against his armrest and regards me carefully. When he speaks again, there’s a strange tinge of sadness in his voice. “You remind me very much of my son.”
“Your son?” I ask.
“Like I said. You’ve offered so much about yourself. It’s only fair that I now tell you a bit about me. It’s the only way we’ll build trust around each other.” He regards my question. “So let me enlighten you about where I came from.”
Everything about him now—his grave expression, the sudden exhaustion in his eyes, the weight on his shoulders—seems serious, and instinctively, I feel myself leaning forward to listen.
“I grew up down here,” he says. “In the Undercity, just like yourfriend Pressa. My mother and father worked a tiny stall in the markets, selling fried skewers. I remember running in the dirty streets, just like you, weaving through the crowds at the markets, helping my parents until the late hours of the night. Like you and your brother, I grew up learning how to fill the holes in my pockets with things I could steal from others. I had to, you see. We could barely feed ourselves.”
Something strange clicks in my mind. For an instant, I see John circling before me, as tall and rumpled as I remember, his hands burned from his factory shift. He slaps a stolen coin from my hands and kicks the money into the gutter.Don’t ever do that again, he scolds me.The next time, that money will come with street police at our door. It’s never worth it.
I shake the memory away, my stomach churning uneasily. My eyes dart for a second to the corridor behind us, where two guards stand now, and then go back to him.
“I married into the Undercity too, you know,” he continues. “I loved my wife, and we had a son that mattered more to us than anything else in the world.”
Loved. Had. The mention of his son again.
“Except he got sick.” His eyes flatten at that. The rasp in his voice trembles. “So did I. It was a common side effect in our neighborhood, located so close to the factories on the outskirts of the city. The smoke from the factories turned my son’s lungs black and shriveled. His grades fell in school, and his Level fell because of that. I began to cough blood.” He pats his throat once. “The infection in my lungs cost me my job. That lowered my Level further. They punish you fornot working, you know. This government. And the lower my Level fell, the harder it became for me to qualify for work.”
There’s a brief silence from him. “So my wife took out a loan with the illegal businesses that run down here, made a deal with them in order to pay for our son’s illness. She agreed to something we couldn’t possibly pay back.”
“What happened?” I whisper.
