It doesn’t mean things in Ross City have been resolved.
Eden and I get the update as we sit at the hospital, where doctors are tending to our injuries. My brother hasn’t said much since we were escorted from the outskirts and brought back to the center of the city. Already, most of the Level system has been restored, and with it, everything else: signs hovering over the buildings, virtual banks and stores, the elevators that restrict people to the floors where their Levels allow them to go. It’s all back up and running, as if nothing happened.
Almostas if.
Now I sit in the waiting area alone, looking out at Ross Citywhile Eden is visiting Pressa in her hospital room. From here, I’m so high up that I can’t make out the Undercity. Before everything happened with Hann, I’d let myself believe I was relieved to not have to see the troubles down there all the time. Now I feel uneasy that it’s invisible from this vantage point.
Eden’s past arguments with me echo in my mind. How had I let myself become so far removed from that world? Why had it taken everything falling apart here for me to understand what Eden had been trying to tell me for years?
I look down at my hands and trace the faint scars here and there. Old scratches from my days running buildings. Cuts from the fights I used to get into. They are memories of a past I thought I wanted nothing to do with anymore. After all, Hann had been consumed by his past, had let it twist him further and further until he withered away into nothing but rage.
But I can’t just pretend that my past never happened, either. The comfort of not remembering is an artificial thing. I rub my hands together, then sigh and lean against my knees. The scars are still there, long since healed over.
“Hey.”
I shift instinctively at the touch of her hand on my arm. It’s June. Today she’s not in her formal military uniform, but in a breezy collar shirt tied casually at her waist, her hair pulled loosely back into a low, messy braid. She smiles at me, then takes a seat beside me.
“I head back to the Republic tomorrow,” she says.
I try to keep the disappointment from my face. “So soon,” I reply.
Her expression wavers. “Anden’s currently talking to yourPresident, figuring out the details of us resuming our trade routes.” There’s a slight pause as she glances at me. Loose strands of her hair fall from her braid, and I pull back the urge to tuck them behind her ear. “I heard the Level system is back in place.”
She says it with a question hanging at the end. I don’t answer right away, either. I nod out toward the city. “More or less,” I reply.
Except it isn’t really the same. Eden’s chip installed something else onto the system, a few alterations to what it had once been. June knows it too, and when I meet her gaze again, she doesn’t seem surprised.
“I hear there’s a protest planned in the Undercity tomorrow,” she says.
In the old Level system, a protest would have been too hard for Undercity citizens, those with lowly, single-digit Levels, to participate. The penalty for going against the government is having your Levels halved, and your future Leveling severely punished.
But with Eden’s new chip and our alterations, that won’t be the case any longer. Across Ross City, people will gradually find out that they won’t be penalized for protesting. Or marching. They won’t be punished for doing what Pressa had been doing for her father—trying to transfer her own points to help him reach a Level where he could buy the medications he needed. There are a dozen differences we’d secretly implemented onto the Level system.
Whether or not the city will let it all stay in place, though, is another question. I’m going to have to explain it all before the AIS.
“When are you going to let them know what you did?” June says after a while.
“They want to see us this afternoon, as soon as Eden and I are out of this hospital.” I clear my throat.
She nods. “If you need me to vouch for anything…”
I smile at her, then reach over to touch her hand. “I know,” I reply.
Her hand lingers, holding gently on to mine. “We can’t save the world,” she says softly.
“But we still try anyway,” I say. “One day at a time.”
Her hand squeezes tighter. I wonder if we’d ever had this kind of ease around each other, where we could show our love for one another without a dark cloud perpetually hanging over our heads. It’s a strange new feeling, this freedom.
“Eden’s internship at Batalla starts soon,” I say. “I’ll be headed your way.”
She smiles. “Are you ready?”
I don’t think so. Maybe I never will be. Still, my heartbeat quickens at the thought of being back in the same country with her, and I look away, suddenly nervous. “I’ve never belonged here,” I say instead. “Maybe the Republic has always been my home. It’s about time, yeah? It just took Eden giving me the nudge to do it.”
A glint of disappointment f lits across June’s expression, and I can only hope I know why.
I keep my hand around hers and pull her toward me. Then I kiss her, our lips barely touching, as tenderly as I can.
