“Drone races, eh?” she asks.
I nod. “If anyone finds out when the next one is,” I reply, “don’t let them shut it down yet. We’ll be there, if Hann’s going to show his face.”
Lara nods. “Too bad about this one,” she says, shaking her head. “I felt a little sorry for her.”
“We wouldn’t have to feel sorry for her if the Level system was fair,” I mutter.
She sighs in exasperation. “Not this again.”
“People like this work for Hann because they don’t have a choice.”
“Hey, you want to argue about it, take it up with Min.”
Min Gheren, the AIS’s director. I’ve brought it up before—not that anyone wants to hear it. So I just shrug and give Lara a sidelong look. “If you actually think that’ll do any good, I’ll talk to her. I’ll even dress in a costume and do a skit.”
We watch as hospital workers cover the woman with a cloth. At least bodies here are treated with some semblance of respect. A memory flashes through my mind, the old trauma of waking up in a sea of bodies, of dragging myself out while clutching my bleeding, ruined knee that had been experimented on.
“Are you all right, Daniel?” Jessan asks me as she peers at my face. I hadn’t even noticed her come up to me.
“I’m fine,” I reply, shaking the memory off. Already, I know what my dreams tonight will be about. The sooner we can get out of the Undercity and back to the Sky Floors, the better. I can’t stand this goddy place anymore.
As we turn around and start to head back to the main street, a virtual alert pings in my view. It’s a floating icon of Eden, with a glowing green circle around it. When I tap on it, a map pops up with a location dot.
Guess the system’s finally tracked my brother down.
I stop short, then narrow my eyes to study it more closely. “Oh, hell no,” I mutter to myself.
Beside me, Jessan frowns. “Hell no what?” she says.
The location dot’s blinking not far from where we currently are. Eden’s not hanging out up in the Sky Floors at all. He’s here in the Undercity.
EDEN
Drone races are illegal, technically.
If you’ve ever been to one, you know why. Basically how it works is that a total of a dozen racers, who each brings their own flying machine, compete in races that take place all over the Undercity. The drones zip through the air and along the narrow, crowded streets down here, going fast enough to kill a person or destroy the side of a building. They have no permits to fly. They don’t get permission to set up a trail through the streets. The gambling that happens over them is all cash, so the government can’t tax or trace it. Still, it’s an exciting sight. People will gather to watch them shoot by until the Level system catches on—promoting disruptive behavior!—and the police come to break it up. Even then, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where the race’s starting point was and catch those responsible for organizing the whole thing.
Pressa’s been gambling on the races for years. Several months ago, she told me about them, and I went with her to watch a race without telling my brother about it.
I loved them immediately—the homemade ingenuity, the way the drones are usually pieced together haphazardly out of spare parts,some of them sleek and small and fast, others large and heavy and menacing. They tear down the streets at a hundred miles an hour, and when I watch them, I can’t help but be impressed that something so fast and dangerous can be made just by putting together metal scraps from the Undercity’s junkyards.
Now Pressa and I emerge from the elevator onto the grungy ground floor of the Undercity and head toward where she lives, a tiny, ramshackle apartment above her father’s apothecary.
“How’s your dad feeling today?” I ask Pressa as we pass through a food market on our way there. “We’re not bothering him, are we?” We move in and out of the smoke from open grills. Over each food stand hovers virtual text telling me what they’re serving. My system automatically translates some of the foreign text into English.KEBABS. SUGAR CANE JUICE. CORN SOUP. FRIED DOUGH.
Pressa shrugs, trying not to look concerned. “Don’t worry about it,” she replies. “He’s having a pretty good day today. He’s probably downstairs in the apothecary right now.”
Technically, her father’s apothecary is as illegal as the drone races, although Ross City’s too lazy to do anything about it. If your Level is below a 7, you’re not allowed access to regular health care. Antarctica claims it’s because if your Level is that low, you can’t be trusted not to use the drugs for illicit purposes.
So Pressa’s dad runs an apothecary where he sells all kinds of dried herbs and natural medicines that are unapproved by the authorities. It’s not really the best option for the poor, but it’s better than nothing.
Pressa stops on a smaller street branching away from the marketplace, then guides us through the maze of graffiti walls and cracked ground before we finally emerge on a different street.
Her father’s apothecary sits on the corner of this intersection, its window barred with rusted iron and its door ajar. It’s a dingy and dirty place, the kind of shop you’d never see in the Sky Floors, where you can have things like toothpaste and shampoo and medicine delivered right to your doorstep just by saying the items out loud.
But the sight of the apothecary still makes me smile. The lights on inside give it a warm glow. As I step in, the familiar, medicinally sweet smell of licorice fills the air. Next to a potted bamboo plant, a lucky porcelain cat sits on the checkout counter, its painted face bobbing back and forth. The aisles are crowded with shelves of cardboard boxes, each with something scribbled on them in Chinese—raw aconite for treating arthritis, ginseng, ephedra stems, rhubarb roots. On and on.
We make our way to the front counter, where an old man’s chatting with several customers. Beside him is his assistant, a lanky boy named Marren, who’s helping to fill a paper bag with various herbs. The customers pat the man on the back, then wish him well before they leave.
