I look back at my brother. The old fear rises in my chest, and images flash through my mind of him captured in the Undercity, his face pale and frightened. “But you’d need to be back in his good graces to do it,” I say, echoing his words. “You have to find him, yeah?”
He nods. “The machine needs a physical chip installed on it. I have to do it physically.”
The terror of not knowing where the Republic had taken him; the uncertainty of what was being done to him; the paranoia of ever letting him go again. It all rises back up in my chest. Eden can see it on my face, because he leans toward me and fixes his steady gaze on mine.
“You told me last night that I don’t ever have to go it alone,” he says. “Well, that goes for you too. I can do this, if you let me. But I’m going to need your help. June’s too.”
Everything in me wants to pull him back, tell him to stay here, stay safe. But I know he’s right. His silhouette is long and lanky now, no longer the small boy I once carried through a war-torn street. There are no guarantees that he’ll come out of this safely—that any of us will. But I also know, without a doubt, that he’s the only one who can do this.
At last, I nod. “What do you need from us?”
“A diversion. I need to convince Hann that I’ve decided to go rogue from what you and the others are planning to do, that I wantin on his plans. Come back to Ross City with me. Find ways to slow him down. If you and June then go after his device with what little we do know, if you’re acting from the outside, then maybe I can convince Hann that I’m helping him keep it safe from you.”
It’s ridiculous. Too dangerous to play this kind of game with a mobster who has survived his entire life on tricks and double crosses. Hann is going to figure this out, and then my brother will be completely at his mercy.
But I still find myself nodding at him. “I’m in,” I say.
He blinks, and I realize that he’d been expecting me to push back. “Do we go to the President with this plan today? Do you think they’ll agree to this?”
I shrug. “There’s no way in hell any of them will—not in a meeting, anyway. But that doesn’t change anything we’re planning to do. We don’t have time to wait around watching them debate issues.”
He looks at me in confusion. “You mean you’re going to go behind the AIS’s back on this? On the government?”
His words bring a smile to my face. My brother—the rulebreaker who has made me panic more times than I can count—has never actually rebelled on the world stage. The old part of me, the wildling from the streets, the boy who’d spent his life running the city and dodging the Republic, stirs.
I shake my head. “I’m such a bad influence on you.”
At that, a grin creeps onto his lips too. “You mean, we’re just going to go?”
“As soon as we can sneak out of this country. By the time we discuss it with them, they’ll have no choice but to agree.”
“They’re going to kill you for this.”
I give him a sidelong grin. “They can try.”
We laugh a little at that, then fall back into silence. “What if we’re doing the wrong thing, Daniel?” Eden asks me. His voice is grave again. “What if restoring the entire system is exactly what shouldn’t happen?”
I look at my brother and take a deep breath. “Then maybe we don’t restore it to exactly what it was,” I finally reply.
I study his face, taking in how serious he is. “What are you planning?” I say.
“I can add a chip to the machine that tweaks how it handles the Level system.” He digs papers out of his pocket and waves me over to the desk. There, we bend over it as he points out where his engine is installed. “The machine pulses a signal through the city’s entire Level system,” he explains as he scribbles. “So we pulse a new signal through it that tells the Level system what to do.” He glances up at me. “Maybe we add some things to that signal that changes how the Level system judges people hooked up to it.”
I frown at him. “And you can do this before we leave?” he asks.
“It’s the machine that’s complicated to put together. Not the signal. Once you understand how it works, you can run another signal through easily. I watched them test one, and it took a matter of minutes.”
I think of the late nights I’d seen him up before, as a small boy and as a young man. The light of creation is bright in his eyes now, and as I consider his words, my emotions gradually alternate from uncertainty to wary hope. “A rebellion within a rebellion,” I murmur.
Eden smiles a little. “Never let it be said that we take the easy way out.”
June seems even less enthusiastic about the plan than I am. But she still shows up at our apartment late in the afternoon, her outfit simple and black, her voice hushed. Beside her, Pressa has a backpack that makes her look even more petite than she is, but she stands tall and confident, the grief in her gaze now replaced with resolution.
“If they come after our plane and we’re forced to stop, let me handle it,” June says. “I swear, somehow these things only ever happen when I’m with you two.”
I lean against the doorway and smile down at her. “You’re the one who agreed to help us.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t come.” She shrugs. “Anden will forgive me. It has to be done.”
