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PART ONE

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THE BOY WHO WALKS IN THE LIGHT

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MY MOTHER THINKS I’M DEAD.

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Obviously I’m not dead, but it’s safer for her to think so.

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At least twice a month, I see my Wanted poster flashed on the JumboTrons scattered throughout downtown Los Angeles. It looks out of place up there. Most of the pictures on the screens are of happy things: smiling children standing under a bright blue sky, tourists posing before the Golden Gate Ruins, Republic commercials in neon colors. There’s also anti-Colonies propaganda. “The Colonies want our land,” the ads declare. “They want what they don’t have. Don’t let them conquer your homes! Support the cause!”

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Then there’s my criminal report. It lights up the JumboTrons in all its multicolored glory:

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WANTED BY THE REPUBLIC

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FILE NO: 462178-3233 “DAY”

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------------------------------------–

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WANTED FOR ASSAULT, ARSON, THEFT,

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DESTRUCTION OF MILITARY PROPERTY,

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AND HINDERING THE WAR EFFORT

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200,000 REPUBLIC NOTES FOR

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INFORMATION LEADING TO ARREST

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They always have a different photo running alongside the report. One time it was a boy with glasses and a head full of thick copper curls. Another time it was a boy with black eyes and no hair at all. Sometimes I’m black, sometimes white, sometimes olive or brown or yellow or red or whatever else they can think of.

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In other words, the Republic has no idea what I look like. They don’t seem to know much of anything about me, except that I’m young and that when they run my fingerprints they don’t find a match in their databases. That’s why they hate me, why I’m not the most dangerous criminal in the country, but the most wanted. I make them look bad.

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It’s early evening, but it’s already pitch-black outside, and the JumboTrons’ reflections are visible in the street’s puddles. I sit on a crumbling window ledge three stories up, hidden from view behind rusted steel beams. This used to be an apartment complex, but it’s fallen into disrepair. Broken lanterns and glass shards litter the floor of this room, and paint is peeling from every wall. In one corner, an old portrait of the Elector Primo lies faceup on the ground. I wonder who used to live here—no one’s cracked enough to let their portrait of the Elector sit discarded on the floor like that.

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My hair, as usual, is tucked inside an old newsboy cap. My eyes are fixed on the small one-story house across the road. My hands fiddle with the pendant tied around my neck.

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Tess leans against the room’s other window, watching me closely. I’m restless tonight and, as always, she can sense it.

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The plague has hit the Lake sector hard. In the glow of the JumboTrons, Tess and I can see the soldiers at the end of the street as they inspect each home, their black capes shiny and worn loose in the heat. Each of them wears a gas mask. Sometimes when they emerge, they mark a house by painting a big red X on the front door. No one enters or leaves the home after that—at least, not when anyone’s looking.

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“Still don’t see them?” Tess whispers. Shadows conceal her expression.

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In an attempt to distract myself, I’m piecing together a makeshift slingshot out of old PVC pipes. “They haven’t eaten dinner. They haven’t sat down by the table in hours.” I shift and stretch out my bad knee.

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“Maybe they’re not home?”

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I shoot Tess an irritated glance. She’s trying to console me, but I’m not in the mood. “A lamp’s lit. Look at those candles. Mom would never waste candles if no one was home.”

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Tess moves closer. “We should leave the city for a couple weeks, yeah?” She tries to keep her voice calm, but the fear is there. “Soon the plague will have blown through, and you can come back to visit. We have more than enough money for two train tickets.”

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I shake my head. “One night a week, remember? Just let me check up on them one night a week.”

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“Yeah. You’ve been coming here every night this week.”

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“I just want to make sure they’re okay.”

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“What if you get sick?”

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“I’ll take my chances. And you didn’t have to come with me. You could’ve waited for me back in Alta.”

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Tess shrugs. “Somebody has to keep an eye on you.” Two years younger than me—although sometimes she sounds old enough to be my caretaker.

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We look on in silence as the soldiers draw closer to my family’s house. Every time they stop at a home, one soldier pounds on the door while a second stands next to him with his gun drawn. If no one opens the door within ten seconds, the first soldier kicks it in. I can’t see them once they rush inside, but I know the drill: a soldier will draw a blood sample from each family member, then plug it into a handheld reader and check for the plague. The whole process takes ten minutes.

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I count the houses between where the soldiers are now and where my family lives. I’ll have to wait another hour before I know their fate.

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A shriek echoes from the other end of the street. My eyes dart toward the sound and my hand whips to the knife sheathed at my belt. Tess sucks in her breath.

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It’s a plague victim. She must’ve been deteriorating for months, because her skin is cracked and bleeding everywhere, and I find myself wondering how the soldiers could have missed this one during previous inspections. She stumbles around for a while, disoriented, then charges forward, only to trip and fall to her knees. I glance back toward the soldiers. They see her now. The soldier with the drawn weapon approaches, while the eleven others stay where they are and look on. One plague victim isn’t much of a threat. The soldier lifts his gun and aims. A volley of sparks engulfs the infected woman.

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She collapses, then goes still. The soldier rejoins his comrades.

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I wish we could get our hands on one of the soldiers’ guns. A pretty weapon like that doesn’t cost much on the market—480 Notes, less than a stove. Like all guns, it has precision, guided by magnets and electric currents, and can accurately shoot a target three blocks away. It’s tech stolen from the Colonies, Dad once said, although of course the Republic would never tell you that. Tess and I could buy five of them if we wanted. . . . Over the years we’ve learned to stockpile the extra money we steal and stash it away for emergencies. But the real problem with having a gun isn’t the expense. It’s that it’s so easy to trace back to you. Each gun has a sensor on it that reports its user’s hand shape, thumbprints, and location. If that didn’t give me away, nothing would. So I’m left with my homemade weapons, PVC pipe slingshots, and other trinkets.

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“They found another one,” Tess says. She squints to get a better look.

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I look down and see the soldiers spill from another house. One of them shakes a can of spray paint and draws a giant red X on the door. I know that house. The family that lives there once had a little girl my age. My brothers and I played with her when we were younger—freeze tag and street hockey with iron pokers and crumpled paper.

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Tess tries to distract me by nodding at the cloth bundle near my feet. “What’d you bring them?”

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I smile, then reach down to untie the cloth. “Some of the stuff we saved up this week. It’ll make for a nice celebration once they pass the inspection.” I dig through the little pile of goodies inside the bundle, then hold up a used pair of goggles. I check them again to make sure there are no cracks in the glass. “For John. An early birthday gift.” My older brother turns nineteen later this week. He works fourteen-hour shifts in the neighborhood plant’s friction stoves and always comes home rubbing his eyes from the smoke. These goggles were a lucky steal from a military supply shipment.

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I put them down and shuffle through the rest of the stuff. It’s mostly tins of meat and potato hash I stole from an airship’s cafeteria, and an old pair of shoes with intact soles. I wish I could be in the room with all of them when I deliver this stuff. But John’s the only one who knows I’m alive, and he’s promised not to tell Mom or Eden.

#PAGE 2#

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Several different things could happen after you take the Trial.

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You get a perfect score—1500 points. No one’s ever gotten this—well, except for some kid a few years ago who the military made a goddy fuss over. Who knows what happens to someone with a score that high? Probably lots of money and power, yeah?

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You score between a 1450 and a 1499. Pat yourself on the back because you’ll get instant access to six years of high school and then four at the top universities in the Republic: Drake, Stanford, and Brenan. Then Congress hires you and you make lots of money. Joy and happiness follow. At least according to the Republic.

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You get a good score, somewhere between 1250 and 1449 points. You get to continue on to high school, and then you’re assigned to a college. Not bad.

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You squeak by with a score between 1000 and 1249. Congress bars you from high school. You join the poor, like my family. You’ll probably either drown while working the water turbines or get steamed to death in the power plants.

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You fail.

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It’s almost always the slum-sector kids who fail. If you’re in this unlucky category, the Republic sends officials to your family’s home. They make your parents sign a contract giving the government full custody over you. They say that you’ve been sent away to the Republic’s labor camps and that your family will not see you again. Your parents have to nod and agree. A few even celebrate, because the Republic gives them one thousand Notes as a condolence gift. Money and one less mouth to feed? What a thoughtful government.

#P#

Except this is all a lie. An inferior child with bad genes is no use to the country. If you’re lucky, Congress will let you die without first sending you to the labs to be examined for imperfections.

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Five houses remain. Tess sees the worry in my eyes and puts a hand on my forehead. “One of your headaches coming on?”

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“No. I’m okay.” I peer in the open window at my mother’s house, then catch my first glimpse of a familiar face. Eden walks by, then peeks out the window at the approaching soldiers and points some handmade metal contraption at them. Then he ducks back inside and disappears from view. His curls flash white-blond in the flickering lamplight. Knowing him, he probably built that gadget to measure how far away someone is, or something like that.

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“He looks thinner,” I mutter.

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“He’s alive and walking around,” Tess replies. “I’d say that’s a win.”

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Minutes later, we see John and my mother wander past the window, deep in conversation. John and I look pretty similar, although he’s grown a little stockier from long days at the plant. His hair, like most who live in our sector, hangs down past his shoulders and is tied back into a simple tail. His vest is smudged with red clay. I can tell Mom’s scolding him for something or other, probably for letting Eden peek out the window. She bats John’s hand away when a bout of her chronic coughing hits her. I let out a breath. So. At least all three of them are healthy enough to walk. Even if one of them is infected, it’s early enough that they’ll still have a chance to recover.

#P#

I can’t stop imagining what will happen if the soldiers mark my mother’s door. My family will stand frozen in our living room long after the soldiers have left. Then Mom will put on her usual brave face, only to sit up through the night, quietly wiping tears away. In the morning, they’ll start receiving small rations of food and water and simply wait to recover. Or die.

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My mind wanders to the stash of stolen money that Tess and I have hidden. Twenty-five hundred Notes. Enough to feed us for months . . . but not enough to buy my family vials of plague medicine.

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The minutes drag on. I tuck my slingshot away and play a few rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Tess. (I don’t know why, but she’s crazy good at this game.) I glance several times at my mother’s window, but don’t see anyone. They must have gathered near the door, ready to open it as soon as they hear a fist against the wood.

#P#

And then the time comes. I lean forward on the ledge, so far that Tess grips my arm to make sure I don’t topple to the ground. The soldiers pound on the door. My mother opens it immediately, lets the soldiers in, and then closes it. I strain to hear voices, footsteps, anything that might come from my house. The sooner this is all over, the sooner I can sneak my gifts to John.

#P#

The silence drags on. Tess whispers, “No news is good news, right?”

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“Very funny.”

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I count off the seconds in my head. One minute passes. Then two, then four, and then finally, ten minutes.

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Then fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.

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I look at Tess. She just shrugs. “Maybe their reader’s broken,” she suggests.

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Thirty minutes pass. I don’t dare move from my vigil. I’m afraid something will happen so quickly that I’ll miss it if I blink. My fingers tap rhythmically against the hilt of my knife.

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Forty minutes. Fifty minutes. An hour.

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“Something’s wrong,” I whisper.

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Tess purses her lips. “You don’t know that.”

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“Yes I do. What could possibly take this long?”

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Tess opens her mouth to reply, but before she can say anything, the soldiers are exiting my house, single file, expressionless. Finally, the last soldier shuts the door behind him and reaches for something tucked at his waist. I suddenly feel dizzy. I know what’s coming.

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The soldier reaches up and sprays one long, red, diagonal line on our door. Then he sprays another line, making an X.

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I curse silently under my breath and start to turn away—

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—but then the soldier does something unexpected, something I’ve never seen before.

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He sprays a third, vertical line on my mother’s door, cutting the X in half.

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1347 HOURS.

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DRAKE UNIVERSITY, BATALLA SECTOR.

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72°F INDOORS.

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IM SITTING IN MY DEAN SECRETARY’S OFFICE. AGAIN. On the other side of the frosted glass door, I can see a bunch of my classmates (seniors, all at least four years older than me) hanging around in an attempt to hear what’s going on. Several of them saw me being yanked out of our afternoon drill class (today’s lesson: how to load and unload the XM-621 rifle) by a menacing pair of guards. And whenever that happens, the news spreads all over campus.

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The Republic’s favorite little prodigy is in trouble again.

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The office is quiet except for the faint hum coming from the dean secretary’s computer. I’ve memorized every detail of this room (hand-cut marble floors imported from Dakota, 324 plastic square ceiling tiles, twenty feet of gray drapes hanging to either side of the glorious Elector’s portrait on the office’s back wall, a thirty-inch screen on the side wall, with the sound muted and a headline that reads: “TRAITOROUS ‘PATRIOTS’ GROUP BOMBS LOCAL MILITARY STATION, KILLS FIVE” followed by “REPUBLIC DEFEATS COLONIES IN BATTLE FOR HILLSBORO”). Arisna Whitaker, the dean secretary herself, is seated behind her desk, tapping on its glass—no doubt typing up my report. This will be my eighth report this quarter. I’m willing to bet I’m the only Drake student who’s ever managed to get eight reports in one quarter without being expelled.

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“Injured your hand yesterday, Ms. Whitaker?” I say after a while.

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She stops typing to glare at me. “What makes you think that, Ms. Iparis?”

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“The pauses in your keystrokes are off. You’re favoring your left hand.”

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Ms. Whitaker sighs and leans back in her chair. “Yes, June. I twisted my wrist yesterday in a game of kivaball.”

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“Sorry to hear it. You should try to swing more from your arm and not from your wrist.”

#PAGE 3#

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I nod, because that’s what she wants me to do. But she’s wrong. I don’t just think I’m smart. I’m the only person in the entire Republic with a perfect 1500 score on her Trial. I was assigned here, to the country’s top university, at twelve, four years ahead of schedule. Then I skipped my sophomore year. I’ve earned perfect grades at Drake for three years. I am smart. I have what the Republic considers good genes—and better genes make for better soldiers make for better chance of victory against the Colonies, my professors always say. And if I feel like my afternoon drills aren’t teaching me enough about how to climb walls while carrying weapons, then . . . well, it wasn’t my fault I had to scale the side of a nineteen-story building with a XM-621 gun strapped to my back. It was self-improvement, for the sake of my country.

#P#

Rumor has it that Day once scaled five stories in less than eight seconds. If the Republic’s most-wanted criminal can pull that off, then how are we ever going to catch him if we’re not just as fast? And if we can’t even catch him, how are we going to win the war?

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Ms. Whitaker’s desk beeps three times. She holds down a button. “Yes?”

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“Captain Metias Iparis is outside the gate,” a voice replies. “He’s here for his sister.”

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“Good. Send him in.” She releases the button and points a finger at me. “I hope that brother of yours starts doing a better job of minding you, because if you end up in my office one more time this quarter—”

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“Metias is doing a better job than our dead parents,” I reply, maybe more sharply than I intended.

#P#

We fall into an uncomfortable silence.

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Finally, after what seems like an eternity, I hear a commotion out in the hall. The students pressed against the door’s glass abruptly disperse, and their shadows move aside to make room for a tall silhouette. My brother.

#P#

As Metias opens the door and steps inside, I can see some girls out in the hall stifling smiles behind their hands. But Metias fixes his full attention on me. We have the same eyes, black with a gold glint, the same long lashes and dark hair. The long lashes work particularly well for Metias. Even with the door closed behind him, I can still hear the whispers and giggles from outside. It looks like he came from his patrol duties straight to my campus. He’s decked out in his full uniform: black officer coat with double rows of gold buttons, gloves (neoprene, spectra lining, captain rank embroidery), shining epaulettes on his shoulders, formal military hat, black trousers, polished boots. My eyes meet his.

#P#

He’s furious.

#P#

Ms. Whitaker gives Metias a brilliant smile. “Ah, Captain!” she exclaims. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

#P#

Metias taps the edge of his hat in a polite salute. “It’s unfortunate it’s under these circumstances again,” he replies. “My apologies.”

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“Not a problem, Captain.” The dean secretary waves her hand dismissively. What a brownnoser—especially after what she’d just said about Metias. “It’s hardly your fault. Your sister was caught scaling a high-rise during her lunch hour today. She’d wandered two blocks off campus to do it. As you know, students are to use only the climbing walls on campus for physical training, and leaving the campus in the middle of the day is forbidden—”

#P#

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Metias interrupts, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “I saw the helicopters over Drake at noon and had a . . . . suspicion June might’ve been involved.”

#P#

There’d been three helicopters. They couldn’t get me off the side of the building by scaling it themselves, so they pulled me off with a net.

#P#

“Thank you for your help,” Metias says to the dean secretary. He snaps his fingers at me, my cue to get up. “When June returns to campus, she’ll be on her best behavior.”

#P#

I ignore Ms. Whitaker’s false smile as I follow my brother out of the office and into the hall. Immediately students hurry over. “June,” a boy named Dorian says as he tags alongside us. He’d asked me (unsuccessfully) to the annual Drake ball two years in a row. “Is it true? How high up did you get?”

#P#

Metias cuts him off with a stern look. “June’s heading home.” Then he puts a hand firmly on my shoulder and guides me away from my classmates. I glance behind me and manage a smile for them.

#P#

“Fourteen floors,” I call back. That gets them buzzing again. Somehow, this has become the closest relationship I have with the other Drake students. I am respected, discussed, gossiped about. Not really talked to.

#P#

Such is the life of a fifteen-year-old senior in a university meant for sixteen and up.

#P#

Metias doesn’t say another word as we make our way down the corridors, past the manicured lawns of the central quad and the glorious Elector’s statue, and finally through one of the indoor gyms. We pass by the afternoon drills I’m supposed to be participating in. I watch my classmates run along a giant track surrounded by a 360-degree screen simulating some desolate warfront road. They’re holding their rifles out in front of them, attempting to load and unload as fast as they can while running. At most other universities, there wouldn’t be so many student soldiers, but at Drake, almost all of us are well on our way to career assignments in the Republic’s military. A few others are tapped for politics and Congress, and some are chosen to stay behind and teach. But Drake is the Republic’s best university, and seeing as how the best are always assigned into the military, our drill room is packed with students.

#P#

By the time we reach one of Drake’s outer streets and I climb into the backseat of our waiting military jeep, Metias can barely contain his anger. “Suspended for a week? Do you want to explain this to me?” he demands. “I get back from a morning of dealing with the Patriot rebels and what do I hear about? Helicopters two blocks from Drake. A girl scaling a skyscraper.”

#P#

I exchange a friendly look with Thomas, the soldier in the driver’s seat. “Sorry,” I mutter.

#P#

Metias turns around from his place in the passenger seat and narrows his eyes at me. “What the hell were you thinking? Did you know you’d wandered right off campus?”

#P#

“Yes.”

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“Of course. You’re fifteen. You went fourteen floors up a—” He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and steadies himself. “For once, I’d appreciate it if you would let me do my daily tours of duty without worrying myself sick over what you’re up to.”

#P#

I try to meet Thomas’s eyes again in the rearview mirror, but he keeps his gaze on the road. Of course, I shouldn’t expect any help from him. He looks as tidy as ever, with his perfectly slicked hair and perfectly ironed uniform. Not a strand or thread out of place. Thomas might be several years younger than Metias and a subordinate on his patrol, but he’s more disciplined than anyone I know. Sometimes I wish I had that much discipline. He probably disapproves of my stunts even more than Metias does.

#P#

We leave downtown Los Angeles behind and travel up the winding highway in silence. The scenery changes from inner Batalla sector’s hundred-floor skyscrapers to densely packed barrack towers and civilian complexes, each one only twenty to thirty stories high, with red guiding lights blinking on their roofs, most with all their paint stripped off after this year’s rash of storms. Metal support beams crisscross their walls. I hope they get to upgrade those supports soon. The war’s been intense lately, and with several decades of infrastructure funding diverted to supplying the warfront, I don’t know if these buildings would hold up well in another earthquake.

#P#

After a few minutes, Metias continues in a calmer voice. “You really scared me today,” he says. “I was afraid they’d mistake you for Day and shoot at you.”

#P#

I know he doesn’t mean this as a compliment, but I can’t help smiling. I lean forward to rest my arms on top of his seat. “Hey,” I say, tugging his ear the way I did when I was a kid, “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

#P#

He lets out a scornful chuckle, but I can tell his anger is already fading. “Yeah. That’s what you say every time, Junebug. Is Drake not keeping your brain busy enough? If not, then I don’t know what will.”

#PAGE 4#

#P#

“Nice try. You’re not going anywhere until you graduate and get assigned to your own patrol.”

#P#

I bite my tongue. Metias did pick me once—once—for a mission last year, when all third-year Drake students had to shadow an assigned military branch. His commander sent him to kill a runaway prisoner of war from the Colonies. So Metias brought me along with him, and together we chased the POW deeper and deeper into our territory, away from the dividing fences and the strip of land running from Dakota to West Texas that separates the Republic and the Colonies, away from the warfront where airships dot the sky. I tracked him into an alley in Yellowstone City, Montana, and Metias shot him.

#P#

During the chase, I broke three ribs and had a knife buried in my leg. Now Metias refuses to take me anywhere.

#P#

When Metias finally speaks again, he sounds grudgingly curious. “So, tell me,” he whispers. “How fast did you climb those fourteen stories?”

#P#

Thomas makes a disapproving sound in his throat, but I break into a grin. Storm’s past. Metias loves me again. “Six minutes,” I whisper back to my brother. “And forty-four seconds. How do you like that?”

#P#

“That must be some sort of record. Not that, you know, you’re supposed to do it.”

#P#

Thomas stops the jeep right behind the lines at a red light and gives Metias an exasperated look. “Come on, Captain,” he says. “June—ah—Ms. Iparis won’t learn a thing if you keep praising her for breaking the rules.”

#P#

“Cheer up, Thomas.” Metias reaches over and claps him on the back. “Surely breaking a rule once in a while is tolerable, especially if you’re doing it to beef up your skills for the Republic’s sake. Victory against the Colonies. Right?”

#P#

The light blinks green. Thomas turns his eyes back to the road (he seems to count to three in his head before letting the jeep go forward). “Right,” he mutters. “You should still be careful what you’re encouraging Ms. Iparis to do, especially with your parents gone.”

#P#

Metias’s mouth tightens into a line, and a familiar, strained look appears in his eyes.

#P#

No matter how sharp my intuition is, no matter how well I do at Drake or how perfectly I score in defense and target practice and hand-to-hand combat, Metias’s eyes always hold that fear. He’s afraid something might happen to me one day—like the car crash that took our parents. That fear never leaves his face. And Thomas knows it.

#P#

I didn’t know our parents long enough to miss them in the same way Metias does. Whenever I cry over losing them, I cry because I don’t have any memories of them. Just hazy recollections of long, adult legs shuffling around our apartment and hands lifting me from my high chair. That’s it. Every other memory from my childhood—looking out into the auditorium as I receive an award, or having soup made for me when I’m sick, or being scolded, or tucked into bed—those are with Metias.

#P#

We drive past half of Batalla sector and through a few poor blocks. (Can’t these street beggars stay a little farther from our jeep?) Finally we reach the gleaming, terraced high-rises of Ruby, and we’re home. Metias gets out first. As I follow, Thomas gives me a small smile.

#P#

“See you later, Ms. Iparis,” he says, tipping his hat.

#P#

I stopped trying to convince him to call me June—he’ll never change. Still, it’s not so bad being called something proper. Maybe when I’m older and Metias doesn’t faint at the idea of me dating . . .

#P#

“Bye, Thomas. Thanks for the ride.” I smile back at him before stepping out of the jeep.

#P#

Metias waits until the door has slammed shut before turning to me and lowering his voice. “I’ll be home late tonight,” he says. There’s that tension in his eyes again. “Don’t go out alone. News from the warfront is they’re cutting power to residences tonight to save energy for the airfield bases. So stay put, okay? The streets’ll be darker than usual.”

#P#

My heart sinks. I wish the Republic would hurry up and win this war already so that for once we might actually get a whole month of nonstop electricity. “Where are you going? Can I come with you?”

#P#

“I’m overseeing the lab at Los Angeles Central. They’re delivering vials of some mutated virus there—it shouldn’t take all night. And I already told you no. No missions.” Metias hesitates. “I’ll be home as early as I can. We have a lot to talk about.” He puts his hands on my shoulders, ignores my puzzled look, and gives me a quick kiss on my forehead. “Love you, Junebug,” he says, his trademark good-bye. He turns to climb back into the jeep.

#P#

“I’m not going to wait up for you,” I call after him, but by now he’s already inside and the jeep’s pulling away with him inside of it. “Be careful,” I murmur.

#P#

But it’s pointless to say now. Metias is too far away to hear me.

#P#

WHEN I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD, MY FATHER CAME home from the warfront for a week’s leave. His job was to clean up after the Republic’s soldiers, so he was usually gone, and Mom was left to raise us boys on her own. When he came home that time, the city patrols did a routine inspection of our house, then dragged Dad off to the local police headquarters for questioning. They’d found something suspicious, I guess.

#P#

The police brought him back with two broken arms, his face bloody and bruised.

#P#

Several nights later, I dipped a ball of crushed ice into a can of gasoline, let the oil coat the ice in a thick layer, and lit it. Then I launched it with a slingshot through the window of our local police headquarters. I remember the fire trucks that came whizzing around the corner shortly thereafter, and the charred remains of the police building’s west wing. They never found out who did it, and I never came forward. There was, after all, no evidence. I had committed my first perfect crime.

#P#

My mother used to hope that I would rise up from my humble roots. Become someone successful, or even famous.

#P#

I’m famous all right, but I don’t think it’s what she had in mind.

#P#

Legend

#P#

It’s nightfall again, a good forty-eight hours since the soldiers marked my mother’s door.

#P#

I wait in the shadows of a back alley one block from the Los Angeles Central Hospital and watch its staff spill in and out of the main entrance. It’s a cloudy night with no moon, and I can’t even make out the crumbling Bank Tower sign at the top of the building. Electric lights shine from each floor—a luxury only government buildings and the elite’s homes can afford. Military jeeps stack up along the street as they wait for approval to enter the underground parking lots. Someone checks them for proper IDs. I keep still, my eyes fixed on the entrance.

#P#

I look pretty awesome tonight. I’m wearing my good pair of shoes—boots made of dark leather worn soft over time, with strong laces and steel toes. Bought them with 150 Notes from our stash. I’ve hidden a knife flat against the sole of each boot. When I shift my feet, I can feel the cool metal against my skin. My black trousers are tucked into my boots and I carry a pair of gloves and a black handkerchief in my pockets. A dark, long-sleeved shirt is tied around my waist. My hair hangs loose down my shoulders. This time I’ve sprayed my white-blond strands a deep black, as if I’d dipped them in crude oil. Earlier in the day, Tess had traded five Notes for a bucket of pygmy pig’s blood from the back alley of a kitchen. My arms, stomach, and face are smeared with it. I’ve also streaked mud on my cheeks, for good measure.

#P#

The hospital spans the first twelve floors of the building, but I’m only interested in the one without windows. That’s the third floor, a laboratory, where the blood samples and medicines will be. From the outside, the third floor is completely hidden behind elaborate stone carvings and worn Republic flags. Behind the facade lies a vast floor with no halls and no doors—just a gigantic room, doctors and nurses behind white masks, test tubes and pipettes, incubators and gurneys. I know this because I’ve been there before. I was there the day I failed my Trial, the day I was supposed to die.

#PAGE 5#

#P#

A lone medic truck pulls up behind the military jeeps. Several soldiers climb out and greet the nurses while others unpack the truck’s boxes. The leader of the group is a young, dark-haired man dressed all in black, except for two rows of silver buttons that line his officer jacket. I strain to hear what he’s saying to one of the nurses.

#P#

“—from around the lake’s edge.” The man tightens his gloves. I catch a glimpse of the gun at his belt. “My men will be at the entrances tonight.”

#P#

“Yes, Captain,” the nurse says.

#P#

The man tips his cap to her. “My name’s Metias. If you have any questions, come see me.”

#P#

I wait until the soldiers have spread out around the hospital’s perimeter and the man named Metias has immersed himself in conversation with two of his men. Several more medic trucks come and go, dropping off soldiers, some with broken limbs, some with gashes on their heads or lacerations on their legs. I take a deep breath, then step out of the shadows and stumble toward the hospital’s entrance.

#P#

A nurse spots me first, just outside the main doors. Her eyes dart to the blood on my arms and face. “Can I be admitted, cousin?” I call to her. I wince in imaginary pain. “Is there still room tonight? I can pay.”

#P#

She looks at me without pity before she returns to scribbling on a notepad. Guess she doesn’t appreciate the “cousin” affection. An ID tag dangles from her neck. “What happened?” she asks.

#P#

I double over when I reach her and lean on my knees. “Was in a fight,” I say, panting. “I think I got stabbed.”

#P#

The nurse doesn’t look at me again. She finishes writing and then nods at one of the guards. “Pat him down.”

#P#

I stay where I am as two soldiers check me for weapons. I yelp on cue when they touch my arms or stomach. They don’t find the knives tucked in my boots. They do take the little pouch of Notes tied to my belt, my payment for entering the hospital. Of course.

#P#

If I was a goddy rich sector boy, I’d be admitted without charge. Or they’d send a doctor for free straight up to where I live.

#P#

When the soldiers give the nurse a thumbs-up, she points me toward the entrance. “Waiting room’s on the left. Have a seat.”

#P#

I thank her and stumble toward the sliding doors. The man named Metias watches me as I pass. He’s listening patiently to one of his soldiers, but I see him study my face as if out of habit. I make a mental note of his face too.

#P#

The hospital is ghostly white on the inside. To my left I see the waiting room, just like the nurse said, a huge space packed with people sporting injuries of all shapes and sizes. Many of them moan in pain—one person lies unmoving on the floor. I don’t want to guess how long some of them have been here, or how much they had to pay to get in. I note where all the soldiers are standing—two by the secretary’s window, two by the doctor’s door far in the distance, several near the elevators, each wearing ID tags—and then I drop my eyes to the floor. I shuffle to the closest chair and sit. For once, my bad knee helps my disguise. I keep my hands pressed against my side for good measure.

#P#

I count ten minutes off in my head, long enough so that new patients have arrived in the waiting room and the soldiers are less interested in me. Then I stand up, pretend to stumble, and lurch toward the closest soldier. His hand reflexively moves to his gun.

#P#

“Sit back down,” he says.

#P#

I trip and fall against him. “I need the bathroom,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. My hands tremble as I grab his black robes for balance. The soldier looks at me in disgust while some of the others snicker. I see his fingers creep closer to his gun’s trigger, but one of the other soldiers shakes his head. No shooting in the hospital. The soldier pushes me away and points toward the end of the hall with his gun.

#P#

“Over there,” he snaps. “Wipe some of that filth off your face. And if you touch me again, I’ll fill you with bullets.”

#P#

I release him and nearly fall to my knees. Then I turn and stagger toward the restroom. My leather boots squeak against the floor tiles. I can feel the soldiers’ eyes on me as I enter the bathroom and lock the door.

#P#

No matter. They’ll forget about me in a couple of minutes. And it’ll take several more minutes before the soldier I’d grabbed realizes that his ID tag is missing.

#P#

Once in the bathroom, I abandon my sick routine. I splash water on my face and scrub until most of the pig’s blood and mud have come off. I unzip my boots and tear open the inner soles to reveal my knives, then tuck them into my belt. My boots go back on my feet. Then I untie the black collared shirt from around my waist and put it on, buttoning it up all the way to my neck and clipping my suspenders over it. I pull my hair back into a tight ponytail and tuck the tail into the shirt so it’s pressed flat against my back.

#P#

Finally, I pull my gloves on and tie a black handkerchief around my mouth and nose. If someone catches me now, I’ll be forced to run anyway. Might as well hide my face.

#P#

When I finish, I use the tip of one of my knives to unscrew the cover to the bathroom’s ventilation shaft. Then I take out the soldier’s ID tag, clip it to my pendant necklace, and stuff myself headfirst into the shaft’s tunnel.

#P#

The air in the shaft smells strange, and I’m grateful for the handkerchief around my face. I inch along as fast as I can. The shaft can’t be more than two feet wide in any direction. Each time I pull myself forward, I have to close my eyes and remind myself to breathe, that the metal walls around me are not closing in. I don’t have to go far—none of these shafts will lead to the third floor. I only need to get far enough to pop out into one of the hospital’s stairwells, away from the soldiers on the first floor. I press forward. I think of Eden’s face, of the medicine he and John and my mother will need, and of the strange red X with the line through it.

#P#

After several minutes, the shaft dead-ends. I look through the vent, and in the slivers of light I can see pieces of a curved stairwell. The floor is an immaculate white, almost beautiful, and—most important—empty. I count to three in my head, then bring my arms as far back as I can and give the shaft cover a mighty shove. The cover flies off. I get one good glimpse of the stairwell, a large, cylindrical chamber with tall plaster walls and tiny windows. One enormous, spiraling set of stairs.

#P#

Now I’m moving with all speed and no stealth. Run it. I squeeze out of the shaft and dart up the steps. Halfway up, I grab the railing and fling myself to the next highest curve. The security cameras must be focused on me. An alarm will sound any minute now. Second floor, third floor. I’m running out of time. As I approach the third-floor door, I tear the ID tag off my necklace and pause long enough to swipe it against the door’s reader. The security cameras haven’t triggered an alarm in time to lock down the stairwell. The handle clicks—I’m in. I throw open the door.

#P#

I’m in a huge room filled with rows of gurneys and chemicals boiling under metal hoods. Doctors and soldiers look up at me with startled faces.

#P#

I grab the first person I see—a young doctor standing close to the door. Before any of the soldiers can point a gun in our direction, I whip out one of my knives and hold it close to the man’s throat. The other doctors and nurses freeze. Several of them scream.

#P#

“Shoot, and you’ll hit him instead,” I call out to the soldiers from beneath my handkerchief. Their guns are focused on me now. The doctor trembles in my grasp.

#P#

I press my knife harder against his neck, careful not to cut him. “I won’t hurt you,” I whisper in his ear. “Tell me where to get the plague cures.”

#P#

He lets out a strangled whimper, and I can feel him sweating under my grip. He gestures toward the refrigerators. The soldiers are still hesitating—but one of them calls out to me.

#P#

“Release the doctor!” he shouts. “Put your hands up.”

#P#

I want to laugh. The soldier must be a new recruit. I cross the room with the doctor, then stop at the refrigerators. “Show me.” The doctor lifts a trembling hand and pulls the fridge door open. A gust of freezing air hits us. I wonder if the doctor can feel how fast my heart is beating.

#PAGE 6#

#P#

“I’m letting go,” I whisper to the doctor. “Duck.” I release my grip and shove him hard enough to make him fall to his knees.

#P#

The soldiers open fire. But I’m ready for them—I hide behind the open fridge door as bullets ricochet off it. I grab several bottles of suppressants and shove them into my shirt. I bolt. One of the stray bullets scrapes me and searing pain shoots up my arm. I’m almost at the exit.

#P#

An alarm goes off as I burst through the stairwell door. There’s a chorus of clicks as all the doors in the stairwell lock from the inside. I’m trapped. The soldiers can still come through any door, but I won’t be able to get out. Shouts and footsteps echo from inside the laboratory. A voice yells out, “He’s hit!”

#P#

My eyes jump to the tiny windows in the stairwell’s plaster walls. They’re too far away for me to reach from the stairs themselves. I grit my teeth and pull out my second knife so that I now have one in each hand. I pray the plaster is soft enough, then leap off the stairs and throw myself toward the wall.

#P#

I stab one knife straight into the plaster. My wounded arm gushes blood, and I scream from the effort. I’m dangling halfway between my launching place and the window. I rock back and forth as hard as I can.

#P#

The plaster is giving way.

#P#

Behind me I hear the laboratory door burst open and soldiers spill out. Bullets spark all around me. I swing toward the window and let go of the knife buried in the wall.

#P#

The window shatters, and I’m suddenly out in the night again and falling, falling, falling like a star to the first floor. I rip open my long-sleeved shirt and let it billow out behind me as thoughts zip through my head. Knees bent. Feetfirst. Relax muscles. Hit with balls of feet. Roll. The ground rushes up at me. I brace myself.

#P#

The impact knocks the wind out of me. I roll four times and crash into the wall on the other side of the street. For a moment I lie there blinded, completely helpless. Above me I can hear furious voices coming from the third-floor window as the soldiers realize they’re going to have to double back into the laboratory to disable the alarm. My senses gradually sharpen—now I’m very aware of the pain in my side and arm. I use my good arm to prop myself up and wince. My chest throbs. I think I’ve cracked a rib. When I try to stand, I realize that I’ve sprained one of my ankles, too. I can’t tell if adrenaline is keeping me from feeling other effects of my fall.

#P#

Shouts come from around the building’s corner. I force myself to think. I’m now near the rear of the building, and several alleys branch off behind me into the darkness. I limp into the shadows.

#P#

When I look over my shoulder, I see a small group of soldiers rush to where I’d fallen, pointing out the broken glass and blood. One of the soldiers is the young captain I saw earlier, the man named Metias. He orders his men to spread out. I quicken my pace and try to ignore the pain. I hunch my shoulders so that the black of my outfit and hair help me melt into the darkness. My eyes stay down. I need to find a sewer cover.

#P#

The edges of my vision are blurring now. I push one hand against my ear and feel for blood. Nothing yet, a good sign. Moments later, I catch sight of a sewer cap on the street. I heave a sigh, readjust the black handkerchief covering my face, and bend down to lift the cover.

#P#

“Freeze. Stay where you are.”

#P#

I whirl around to see Metias, the young captain from the hospital’s entrance, facing me. He has a gun pointed straight at my chest, but to my surprise, he doesn’t fire it. I tighten my grip on my remaining knife. Something changes in his eyes, and I know he recognizes me, the boy who had pretended to stagger into the hospital. I smile—I have plenty of wounds for the hospital to treat now.

#P#

Metias narrows his eyes. “Hands up. You’re under arrest for theft, vandalism, and trespassing.”

#P#

“You’re not going to take me in alive.”

#P#

“I’d be happy to take you in dead, if you prefer.”

#P#

What happens next is a blur. I see Metias tense up to fire his gun. I throw my knife at him with all my strength. Before he can fire, my knife hits him hard in the shoulder and he falls backward with a thud. I don’t wait to see him get up. I bend down and heave the manhole cover up, then lower myself down the ladder and into the blackness. I pull the sewer cover back in place.

#P#

My injuries are catching up to me now. I stumble along in the sewers, my vision going in and out of focus, one of my hands pressed hard against my side. I’m careful not to touch the walls. Every breath hurts. I must’ve cracked a rib. I’m alert enough to think about which direction I’m moving in and concentrate on heading toward the Lake sector. Tess will be there. She’ll find me and help me to safety. I think I can hear the rumble of footsteps overhead, the shouts of soldiers. No doubt someone has discovered Metias by now, and they might even have headed down into the sewers, too. They could be hot on my trail with a pack of dogs. I make a point to take several turns and walk in the filthy sewer water. Behind me, I hear splashes and the sounds of echoing voices. I take more turns. The voices get a little closer, then farther. I keep my original direction planted firmly in my mind.

#P#

It would be something—wouldn’t it?—to escape the hospital only to die down here, lost in a goddy maze of sewers.

#P#

I count off the minutes to keep myself from passing out. Five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour. The footsteps behind me sound far away now, as if they are on a different path than I am. Sometimes I hear strange sounds, something like a bubbling test tube and a sigh of steam pipes, a breath of air. It comes and goes. Two hours. Two and a half hours. When I see the next ladder leading up to the surface, I take my chances and pull myself up. I’m in real danger of fainting now. It takes all my remaining strength to drag myself onto the street. I’m in a dark alley. When I’ve caught my breath, I blink away my fuzzy vision and study my surroundings.

#P#

I can see Union Station several blocks away. I’m not far now. Tess will be there, waiting for me.

#P#

Three more blocks. Two more blocks.

#P#

I have one more block. I can’t hold on any longer. I find a dark spot in the alley and collapse. The last thing I see is the silhouette of a girl off in the distance. Maybe she’s walking toward me. I curl up and begin to fade away.

#P#

Before I black out, I realize that my pendant is no longer looped around my neck.

#P#

I STILL REMEMBER THE DAY THAT MY BROTHER MISSED HIS induction ceremony into the Republic military.

#P#

A Sunday afternoon. Hot and mucky. Brown clouds covered the sky. I was seven years old, and Metias was nineteen. My white shepherd puppy, Ollie, was asleep on our apartment’s cool marble floor. I lay feverishly in bed while Metias sat by my side, his brow furrowed with worry. We could hear the loudspeakers outside playing the Republic’s national pledge. When they got to the part mentioning our president, Metias stood and saluted in the direction of the capital. Our illustrious Elector Primo had just accepted another four-year presidential term. That would make this his eleventh term.

#P#

“You don’t have to sit here with me, you know,” I said to him after the pledge finished. “Go to your induction. I’ll be sick either way.”

#P#

Metias ignored me and placed another cool towel on my head. “I’ll be inducted either way,” he said. He fed me a purple slice of orange. I remember watching him peel that orange for me; he cut one long, efficient line in the fruit’s peel, then removed it all in one piece.

#P#

“But it’s Commander Jameson.” I blinked through swollen eyes. “She did you a favor by not assigning you to the warfront. . . . She’ll be upset you’re skipping. Won’t she mark it on your record? You don’t want to be kicked out like some street con.”

#P#

Metias tapped my nose disapprovingly. “Don’t call people that, Junebug. It’s rude. And she can’t kick me off her patrol for missing the ceremony. Besides,” he added with a wink, “I can always hack into their database and wipe my record clean.”

#PAGE 7#

#P#

Metias laughed. “I don’t need girlfriends. I’ve got a baby sister to take care of.”

#P#

“Come on. You’re going to get a girlfriend someday.”

#P#

“We’ll see. Guess I’m picky like that.”

#P#

I stopped to look my brother directly in the eyes. “Metias, did our mother take care of me when I was sick? Did she do things like this?”

#P#

Metias reached over to push sweaty strands of my hair away from my face. “Don’t be stupid, Junebug. Of course Mom took care of you. And she was much better at it than I am.”

#P#

“No. You take care of me the best,” I murmured. My eyelids were growing heavy.

#P#

My brother smiled. “Nice of you to say so.”

#P#

“You’re not going to leave me too, are you? You’ll stay with me longer than Mom and Dad did?”

#P#

Metias kissed me on my forehead. “Forever and ever, kid, until you’re sick and tired of seeing me.”

#P#

Legend

#P#

0001 HOURS.

#P#

RUBY SECTOR.

#P#

72°F INDOORS.

#P#

I know something has gone wrong the instant Thomas shows up at our door. The lights in all residential buildings have gone off, just as Metias had said they would, and nothing but oil lamps light the apartment. Ollie is barking up a storm. I’m dressed in my training uniform and a black and red vest with my boots laced and my hair tied back in a tight ponytail. For a brief moment, I’m actually glad that Metias isn’t the one waiting at the door. He’d see my getup and know that I’m headed out to the track. Defying him again.

#P#

When I open the door, Thomas coughs nervously at the surprised look on my face and pretends to smile. (There is a streak of black grease on his forehead, probably from his own index finger. Which means he just finished polishing his rifle earlier in the evening, and his patrol’s inspection is tomorrow.) I cross my arms. He touches the edge of his cap politely.

#P#

“Hello, Ms. Iparis,” he says.

#P#

I take a deep breath. “I’m heading out to the track. Where’s Metias?”

#P#

“Commander Jameson has requested that you come with me to the hospital as soon as possible.” Thomas hesitates for a second. “It’s more of an order than a request.”

#P#

There’s a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Why didn’t she just call me?” I ask.

#P#

“She prefers for me to escort you.”

#P#

“Why?” My voice starts to rise. “Where’s my brother?”

#P#

Now Thomas takes a deep breath. I already know what he’s going to say. “I’m sorry. Metias has been killed.”

#P#

That’s when the world around me goes silent.

#P#

As if from a great distance, I can see that Thomas is still speaking, gesturing with his hands, pulling me to him for a hug. I hug him back without realizing what I’m doing. I feel nothing. I nod when he steadies me and asks me to do something. To follow him. He keeps an arm around my shoulders. A dog’s wet nose nudges my hand. Ollie follows me out of the apartment, and I tell him to stay close. I lock the door and stuff the key into my pocket and let Thomas guide us through the darkness to the stairs. He’s talking the whole time, but I can’t hear him. I stare straight ahead at the reflective metal decorations lining the stairwell, at the distorted reflections of Ollie and me.

#P#

I can’t make out my expression. I’m not sure I even have one.

#P#

Metias should have taken me with him. This is my first coherent thought as we reach the bottom floor of our high-rise and climb into a waiting jeep. Ollie jumps into the backseat and sticks his head out the window. The car smells damp (like rubber and metal and fresh sweat—a group of people must’ve ridden in here recently). Thomas sits in the driver’s seat and makes sure my seat belt is buckled. Such a small, stupid thing.

#P#

Metias should have taken me with him.

#P#

I run this thought over and over again in my head. Thomas doesn’t say anything else. He lets me stare out at the darkened city as we go, occasionally shooting me a hesitant glance. Some small part of me makes a mental note to apologize to him later.

#P#

My eyes glaze over at the familiar buildings we pass. People (mostly workers hired from the slums) pack the first-floor stands even with the lights out, hunched over bowls of cheap food in the ground level cafés. Clouds of steam float high in the distance. JumboTrons, always on, regardless of power shortages, display the latest warnings about floods and quarantines. A few are about the Patriots—this time for another bombing up in Sacramento that killed half a dozen soldiers. A few cadets, eleven-year-olds with yellow stripes on their sleeves, linger on the steps outside an academy, the old and worn Walt Disney Concert Hall letters almost completely faded. Several other military jeeps cross our intersection, and I see the blank faces of their soldiers. Some of them have black goggles on so I can’t see their eyes at all.

#P#

The sky looks more overcast than usual—signs of a rainstorm. I pull my hood over my head in case I forget when we finally get out of the car.

#P#

When I turn my attention back to the window, I see the part of downtown that sits inside Batalla. All the lights in this military sector are on. The hospital’s tower looms just a few blocks away.

#P#

Thomas notices me craning my neck for a better view. “Almost there,” he says.

#P#

As we draw near, I can see the crisscrossed lines of yellow tape surrounding the bottom of the tower, the clusters of city patrol soldiers (red stripes on their sleeves, like Metias), as well as some photographers and street police, the black vans and medic trucks. Ollie lets out a whine.

#P#

“I’m guessing they didn’t catch the person,” I say to Thomas.

#P#

“How do you know?”

#P#

I nod toward the building. “That’s really something,” I continue. “Whoever it was survived a two-and-a-half-story jump and still had enough strength to escape.”

#P#

Thomas looks toward the tower and tries to see what I see—the broken third-floor stairwell window, the taped-off section right below it, the soldiers searching alleyways, the lack of ambulances. “We haven’t caught the guy,” he admits after a moment. The rifle grease on his forehead gives him a bewildered look. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t find his body later.”

#P#

“You won’t find it if you haven’t found it yet.”

#P#

Thomas opens his mouth to say something, then decides against it and goes back to concentrating on the road. When the jeep finally rolls to a stop, Commander Jameson breaks away from the group of guards she’s standing with and marches over to my car door.

#P#

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says abruptly to me. I feel a brief pang of guilt for my coldness and decide to nod back at him. His father had been a janitor for our apartment high-rise before he died, his late mother a cook at my grade school. Metias had been the one to recommend Thomas (who had a high Trial score) to be assigned to the prestigious city patrols, despite his humble background. So he must feel just as numb as I do.

#P#

Commander Jameson walks up to my car door and raps twice on the window to get my attention. Her thin lips are painted an angry stroke of red, and in the night her auburn hair looks dark brown—almost black.

#P#

“Move it, Iparis. Time is of the essence.” Her eyes flicker to Ollie in the backseat. “That’s not a police dog, kid.” Even now, her demeanor is unflinching.

#P#

I step out of the jeep and give her a quick salute. Ollie jumps down next to me. “You called for me, Commander,” I say.

#P#

Commander Jameson doesn’t bother to return my gesture. She starts walking away, and I’m forced to hurry along beside her, struggling to fall into step. “Your brother, Metias, is dead,” she says. Her tone doesn’t change. “I’m of the understanding that you are almost done with your training as an agent, correct? That you’ve already finished your courses on tracking?”

#P#

I fight hard to breathe. A second confirmation of Metias’s death. “Yes, Commander,” I manage to say.

#P#

We head into the hospital. (Waiting room is empty; they’ve cleared out all patients; guards are clustered near the stairwell entrance; that’s probably where the crime scene starts.) Commander Jameson keeps her eyes forward and her hands behind her back. “What was your Trial score?”

#PAGE 8#

#P#

She doesn’t stop walking. “Ah, that’s right,” she says, as if it is the first time she’s heard it. “Maybe you’ll be of use after all. I’ve called ahead to Drake and told them that you are dismissed from further training. You were almost done with your coursework anyway.”

#P#

I frown. “Commander?”

#P#

“I received a full history of your grades there. Perfect scores—you’ve already finished most of your courses in half the number of years, yes? They also say you’re quite a troublemaker. Is this true?”

#P#

I can’t understand what she wants from me. “Sometimes, Commander. Am I in trouble? Did they expel me?”

#P#

Commander Jameson smiles. “Hardly. They’ve graduated you early. Follow me—there’s something I want you to see.”

#P#

I want to ask about Metias, about what happened here. But her icy demeanor stops me.

#P#

We walk down a first-floor hall until we reach an emergency exit door at the very end of it. There, Commander Jameson waves away the soldiers guarding it and ushers me through. A low growl rumbles in Ollie’s throat. We step out into open air, this time at the back of the building. I realize that we are now inside the yellow tape. Dozens of soldiers stand in clusters around us.

#P#

“Hurry up,” Commander Jameson snaps at me. I quicken my pace.

#P#

A moment later, I realize what she wants to show me and where we are walking. Not far ahead is an object covered in a white sheet. (Six feet long, human; feet and limbs look intact under the cloth; definitely didn’t fall naturally like that, so someone had to lay him out.) I start to tremble. When I look down at Ollie, I see that the fur on his back is standing up. I call to him several times, but he refuses to walk any closer, so I’m forced to follow Commander Jameson and leave him behind.

#P#

Metias kissed me on my forehead. “Forever and ever, kid, until you’re sick and tired of seeing me.”

#P#

Commander Jameson halts in front of the white sheet, then bends down and throws it aside. I stare down at the dead body of a soldier clad in military black, a knife still protruding from his chest. Dark blood stains his shirt, his shoulder, his hands, the grooves of the knife hilt. His eyes are closed now. I kneel before him and smooth strands of his dark hair away from his face. It’s odd. I don’t take in any details of the scene. I still feel nothing but that deep numbness.

#P#

“Tell me about what might have happened here, cadet,” Commander Jameson demands. “Consider this a pop quiz. This soldier’s identity should motivate you to get it right.”

#P#

I don’t even inch from the sting of her words. The details rush in, and I start talking. “Whoever hit him with this knife either stabbed him from close range or has an incredibly strong throwing arm. Right-handed.” I run my fingers along the blood-caked handle. “Impressive aim. The knife is one of a pair, correct? See this pattern painted on the bottom of the blade? It cuts off abruptly.”

#P#

Commander Jameson nods. “The second knife is stuck in the wall of the stairwell.”

#P#

I look toward the dark alley that my brother’s feet point to and notice the sewer cover several yards away. “That’s where he made his getaway,” I say. I estimate the direction the sewer cap is turned in. “He’s also left-handed. Interesting. He’s ambidextrous.”

#P#

“Please continue.”

#P#

“From here, the sewers will take him deeper into the city or west to the ocean. He’ll choose the city—he’s probably too wounded to do otherwise. But it’s impossible to track him accurately now. If he has any sense, he’ll have taken half a dozen turns down there and done it in the sewer water too. He wouldn’t have touched the walls. He’ll give us nothing to track.”

#P#

“I’m going to leave you here for a bit, so you can collect your thoughts. Meet me in two minutes in the third-floor stairwell so you can give the photographers some room.” She glances once at Metias’s body before she turns away—for a brief second, her face softens. “What a waste of a good soldier.” Then she shakes her head and leaves.

#P#

I watch her go. The others around me stay a good distance away, apparently eager to avoid an awkward conversation. I look down at my brother’s face again. To my surprise, he appears peaceful. His skin looks tan, not pale like I’d assumed it would. I half expect his eyes to flutter, his mouth to smile. Bits of dried blood flake off onto my hands. When I try to brush them off, they stick to my skin. I don’t know if this is what sets off my anger. My hands start shaking so hard that I press them against Metias’s clothes in an attempt to steady them. I’m supposed to be analyzing the crime scene . . . but I can’t concentrate.

#P#

“You should have taken me with you,” I whisper to him. Then I lean my head against his and begin to cry. In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother’s killer.

#P#

I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine.

#P#

Too soon, soldiers come to take Metias to the morgue.

#P#

0317 HOURS.

#P#

MY APARTMENT.

#P#

SAME NIGHT.

#P#

THE RAIN HAS STARTED.

#P#

I lie on the couch with my arm draped over Ollie. The spot where Metias usually sits is empty. Stacks of old photo albums and Metias’s journals clutter up the coffee table. He’d always loved our parents’ old-fashioned ways, and kept handwritten journals just like how they’d kept all these paper photos. “You can’t trace or tag them online,” he always said. Ironic coming from an expert hacker.

#P#

Was it just this afternoon that he’d picked me up from Drake? He’d wanted to talk to me about something important, right before he left. But now I’ll never know what he had to say. Papers and reports cover my stomach. One of my hands clutches a pendant necklace, a piece of evidence I’ve been studying for a while now. I squint at its smooth surface, its lack of patterns. Then I drop my hand with a sigh. My head hurts.

#P#

I learned earlier why Commander Jameson pulled me out of Drake. She’s had her eye on me for a long time. Now she suddenly has one less in Metias’s patrol, and she’s looking to add an agent. A perfect time to nab me before other recruiters do. Starting tomorrow, Thomas is taking over Metias’s position for the time being—and I’m entering the patrol as a detective agent in training.

#P#

My first tracking mission: Day.

#P#

“We’ve tried a variety of tactics to catch Day in the past, but none of them have worked,” Jameson told me just before she sent me home. “So. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll continue with my patrol’s projects. For you, let’s test out your skills with a practice run. Show me how you’d track Day. Maybe you’ll get somewhere. Maybe not. But you’re a set of fresh young eyes, and if you impress me, I’ll promote you to be a full agent on this patrol. I’ll make you famous—the youngest agent out there.”

#P#

I close my eyes and try to think.

#P#

Day killed my brother. I know this because we found a stolen ID tag lying halfway up the third-floor stairwell, which led us to the soldier pictured on the tag, who stammered out a description of what the boy looked like. His description didn’t match anything we have on file for Day—but the truth is, we know little about what he looks like, except that he’s young, like the kid at the hospital tonight. The fingerprints on the ID tag are the same prints found just last month at a crime scene linked to Day, prints that don’t match any civilian the Republic has on record.

#P#

Day was there, in the hospital. He was also careless enough to leave the ID tag behind.

#PAGE 9#

#P#

Day could also have a sponsor who hired him to pull this stunt. But the hospital is a dangerous place, and a sponsor would’ve had to pay Day a great deal of money. And if that much money was involved, he certainly would have planned more thoroughly and known when the laboratory’s next shipment of plague medicine would arrive. Besides, Day wasn’t a mercenary in any of his past crimes. He’s attacked the Republic’s military assets on his own, slowed down shipments to the warfront, and destroyed our warfront-bound airships and fighter jets. He has some sort of agenda to stop us from winning against the Colonies. For a while we thought he might work for the Colonies—but his jobs are crude, without high-tech equipment or noticeable funding behind them. Not really what you’d expect from our enemy. He’s never taken jobs for hire as far as I know, and it’s unlikely he’d start now. Who would hire an untested mercenary? Another possible sponsor is the Patriots—but if Day had been working for them on this job, one of the Patriots would’ve drawn their signature flag (thirteen red and white stripes, with fifty white dots on a blue rectangle) on a wall somewhere near the crime scene by now. They’d never miss a chance to claim victory.

#P#

But the biggest thing that doesn’t compute for me is this: Day has never killed anyone before. That’s another reason why I don’t think he’s connected to the Patriots. In one of his past crimes, he crept into a quarantine zone by tying up a street policeman. The policeman didn’t have a scratch on him (except a black eye). Another time, he broke into a bank vault but left the four security guards at its back entrance untouched—although a bit stupefied. He once torched a whole squadron of fighter jets on an empty airfield in the middle of the night and has on two occasions grounded airships by crippling their engines. He once vandalized the side of a military building. He’s stolen money, food, and goods. But he doesn’t set roadside bombs. He doesn’t shoot soldiers. He doesn’t attempt assassinations. He doesn’t kill.

#P#

So why Metias? Day could’ve made his escape without killing him. Did Day hold some sort of grudge? Had my brother done something to him in the past? It couldn’t have been accidental—that knife went straight through Metias’s heart.

#P#

Straight through his intelligent, stupid, stubborn, overprotective heart.

#P#

I open my eyes, then lift my hand and study the pendant necklace again. It belongs to Day—fingerprints told us that much. It’s a circular disk with nothing engraved on it, something we found lying on the floor of the hospital’s stairwell along with the stolen ID. It’s not from any religion I know of. It’s worth nothing in terms of money—cheap nickel and copper, the necklace part made of plastic. Which means he probably didn’t steal it, and it has a different meaning for him and is worth carrying around with the risk of losing or dropping it. Maybe it’s a good luck charm. Maybe it was given to him by someone he has emotional ties with. Maybe this is the same person he tried to steal plague medicine for. It has a secret; I just don’t know what.

#P#

Day’s exploits used to fascinate me. But now he is my matched enemy—my target. My first mission.

#P#

I gather my thoughts for two days. On the third day, I call Commander Jameson. I have a plan.

#P#

I’M DREAMING THAT I’M HOME AGAIN. EDEN SITS on the floor, drawing some sort of loopy shape on the floorboards. He’s about four or five years old, with cheeks still round with baby fat. Every few minutes he gets up and asks me to critique his art. John and I are crouched together on the sofa, trying in vain to fix the radio that we’ve had in our family for years. I can still remember when Dad brought it home. It’ll tell us which quarters have plague, he’d said. But now its screws and dials sit worn and lifeless in our laps. I ask Eden for help, but he just giggles and tells us to do it ourselves.

#P#

Mom stands alone in our tiny kitchen, trying to cook dinner. This is a scene I know well. Both her hands are wrapped in thick bandages—she must’ve cut herself on broken bottles or empty tins while cleaning out the trash cans around Union Station today. She winces as she breaks up some frozen corn kernels with the flat edge of a knife. Her injured hands tremble.

#P#

Stop, Mom. I’ll help you. I try to get up, but my feet feel glued to the ground.

#P#

After a while, I lift my head to see what Eden’s drawing now. At first I can’t make out what the shapes are—they seem jumbled, littered in random patterns under his busy hand.

#P#

When I look closer, I realize that he’s drawing soldiers breaking into our home. He’s drawing them with a bloodred crayon.

#P#

I wake with a start. Dim streaks of light, gray and waning, are filtering in through a nearby window. I hear the faint sound of rain. I’m in what looks like a child’s abandoned bedroom. The wallpaper is blue and yellow, and peeling at the corners. Two candles light the room. I can feel my feet hanging off the end of a bed. There’s a pillow under my head. When I shift, I let out a moan and close my eyes.

#P#

Tess’s voice drifts over to me. “Can you hear me?” she says.

#P#

“Not so loud, cousin.” My voice comes out in a whisper through dry lips. My head throbs with a blinding, stabbing headache. Tess recognizes the pain on my face and stays quiet while I keep my eyes closed and wait it out. The pain goes on, like a pick slamming repeatedly into the back of my head.

#P#

After an eternity, the headache finally starts to fade. I open my eyes. “Where am I? Are you all right?”

#P#

Tess’s face comes into focus. She has her hair pulled back in a short braid, and her lips are pink and smiling. “Am I all right?” she says. “You’ve been knocked out for over two days. How are you feeling?”

#P#

Pain hits me in waves, this time from the wounds that must cover me. “Fantastic.”

#P#

Tess’s smile fades. “You pulled a close one there—closest one yet. If I hadn’t found someone to take us in, I don’t think you would’ve made it.”

#P#

Suddenly everything comes rushing back to me. I remember the hospital entrance, the stolen ID tag and the stairwell and the laboratory, the long fall, my knife thrown at the captain, the sewers. The medicine.

#P#

The medicine. I try to sit up, but I move too fast and have to bite my lip from the pain. My hand flies to my neck—there’s no pendant to grab. Something aches in my chest. I lost it. My father had given me that pendant, and now I’d been careless enough to lose it.

#P#

Tess tries to calm me. “Easy, there.”

#P#

“Is my family okay? Did some of the medicine survive my fall?”

#P#

“Some of it.” Tess helps me back down before leaning her elbows on my bed. “I guess suppressants are better than nothing. I’ve dropped it off at your mother’s home already, along with your gift bundle. I went through the back and handed them all off to John. He says to tell you thanks.”

#P#

“You didn’t tell John what happened, did you?”

#P#

Tess rolls her eyes. “You think I can keep that from him? Everyone’s heard about the break-in at the hospital by now, and John knows you’re hurt. He’s pretty angry about it.”

#P#

“Did he say who’s sick? Is it Eden? Mom?”

#P#

Tess bites her lip. “It’s Eden. John says everyone else is fine for now. But Eden can talk and seems alert enough. He tried to get out of bed and help your mother fix the leak under your sink, to prove he felt strong, but of course she sent him back to bed. She ripped up two of her shirts to use as cool cloths for Eden’s fever, so John said if you find any more clothes that fit Mom, he’d be happy to take them.”

#P#

I let out a deep breath. Eden. Of course it’s Eden—still acting like a little engineer even with the plague. At least I managed to get some medicine. Everything’s going to work out. Eden will be okay for a while, and I don’t mind dealing with John’s lectures. As for my lost pendant, well . . . for an instant I’m glad that my mother can’t find out about this, because it would break her heart.

#P#

“I couldn’t find any cures, and I didn’t have time to do a search.”

#PAGE 10#

#P#

“Whose house are we in?”

#P#

As soon as I ask this question, I hear a door close, then footsteps in the room next to ours. I look at Tess in alarm. She just nods quietly at me and tells me to relax.

#P#

A man walks in, shaking dirty drops of rain from an umbrella. He carries a brown paper bag in his hands. “You’re awake,” he says to me. “That’s good.” I study his face. He’s very pale and a little chubby, with bushy eyebrows and kindly eyes. “Girl,” he says, looking at Tess, “do you think he can leave by tomorrow night?”

#P#

“We’ll be on our way by then.” Tess picks up a bottle of something clear—alcohol, I guess—and wets the edge of the bandage with it. I flinch when she touches it to where a bullet had grazed my arm. It feels like a match lit against my skin. “Thank you again, sir, for letting us stay here.”

#P#

The man grunts, his expression uncertain, and awkwardly nods his head. He looks around the room as if searching for something he’s lost. “I’m afraid that’s as long as I can keep you. The plague patrol’s going to do another sweep soon.” He hesitates. Then he pulls two cans from the paper bag and sets them down on a dresser. “Some chili for you. It’s not the best, but it’ll fill you up. I’ll bring you some bread, too.” Before either of us can say anything, he hurries out of the room with the rest of his groceries.

#P#

For the first time, I look down at my body. I’m clothed in a brown pair of army trousers, and my bare chest and arm are bandaged. So is one of my legs. “Why’s he helping us?” I ask Tess in a low voice.

#P#

She looks up from wrapping the fresh bandage around my arm. “Don’t be so suspicious. He had a son who worked at the warfront. He died of the plague a few years ago.” I yelp when Tess ties a finishing knot on the bandage. “Breathe in for me.” I do as she says. Several sharp pains stab me as she presses her fingers delicately against different parts of my chest. Her cheeks turn pink as she works. “You might have a crack in one of your ribs, but definitely no breaks. You should heal quickly enough. Anyway, the man didn’t ask our names and so I didn’t ask his. Best not to know. I told him why you got yourself injured like this. I think it reminded him of his son.”

#P#

I lay my head back down on the pillow. My body hurts all over. “I lost both my knives,” I mutter, so that the man doesn’t hear me. “They were good knives.”

#P#

“Sorry to hear it, Day,” Tess says. She brushes a stray hair from her face and leans over me. She holds up a clear plastic bag with three silver bullets inside. “I found these caught in the folds of your clothes and figured you might want them for your slingshot or something.” She stuffs the bag into one of my pockets.

#P#

I smile. When I first met Tess three years ago, she was a skinny ten-year-old orphan rummaging through trash bins in the Nima sector. She’d needed my help so much in those early years that I sometimes forget just how much I rely on her now.

#P#

“Thanks, cousin,” I say. She murmurs something I can’t understand, and looks away.

#P#

After a while, I fall back into a deep sleep. When I wake up again, I don’t know how much time has passed. The headache is gone and it’s dark outside. It might be the same day, although I feel like I’ve slept far too long for that. No soldiers, no police. We’re still alive. I lie unmoving for a moment, wide-awake in the darkness. Looks like our caretaker hasn’t reported us. Yet.

#P#

Tess is dozing on the edge of the bed with her head tucked into her arms. Sometimes I wish I could find her a good home, some kind family willing to take her in. But every time I have this thought, I push it away—because Tess would be back on the Republic’s grid if she ever joined a real family. And she’d be forced to take the Trial because she never took it before. Or worse, they’d learn about her affiliation with me and interrogate her. I shake my head. Too naive, too easily manipulated. I wouldn’t trust her with anyone else. Besides . . . I’d miss her. The first two years I’d spent wandering the streets by myself were lonely ones.

#P#

I gingerly move my ankle in a circle. It’s a little stiff, but otherwise pretty painless—no torn muscles, no serious swelling. My bullet wound still burns and my ribs ache something fierce, but this time I’m strong enough to sit up without too much trouble. My hands go automatically up to my hair, which is loose and hanging past my shoulders. With one hand, I pull it into a messy tail and twist it into a tight knot. Then I lean over Tess, grab my beaten newsboy cap from the chair, and pull it on. My arms burn from the effort.

#P#

I smell chili and bread. There’s a bowl with some steam rising from it on the dresser next to the bed and a small loaf of bread balanced on the bowl’s edge. I think back to the two cans our caretaker had placed on the dresser.

#P#

My stomach growls. I devour it all.

#P#

As I’m licking the last of the chili off my fingers, I hear a door close somewhere in the house and, moments later, footsteps rushing toward our room. I tense up. Next to me, Tess jerks awake and grabs my arm.

#P#

“What was that?” she blurts out. I hold a finger to my lips.

#P#

Our caretaker hurries into the room, a tattered robe draped over his pajamas. “You should leave now,” he whispers. Sweat beads on his forehead. “I just heard about a man who’s been looking for you.”

#P#

I stare levelly at him. Tess gives me a panicked look. “How do you know?” I ask.

#P#

The man starts cleaning up the room, grabbing my empty bowl and wiping down the dresser. “He’s telling people that he has plague cures for someone who needs it. He says he knows that you’re injured. He never gave a name, but he must be talking about you.”

#P#

I sit up straight and swing my legs over the side of the bed. There’s no choice now. “He’s talking about me,” I agree. Tess snatches up a few clean bandages and stuffs them under her shirt. “It’s a trap. We’ll leave immediately.”

#P#

The man nods once. “You can get out through the back door. Straight into the hall, on your left.”

#P#

I take a moment to meet his eyes. In that instant, I realize that he knows exactly who I am. He won’t say it out loud, though. Like other people in our sector who have realized who I am and helped me in the past, he doesn’t exactly disapprove of the trouble I cause for the Republic. “We’re very grateful,” I say.

#P#

He says nothing in return. I grab Tess’s hand and we make our way out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the back door. The night’s humidity is thick. My eyes water from the pain of my wounds.

#P#

We make our way through silent back alleys for six blocks until we finally slow down. My injuries are screaming now. I reach up to touch my pendant necklace for comfort, but then I remember that it’s no longer around my neck. A sick feeling rises in my stomach. What if the Republic figures out what it is? Will they destroy it? What if they trace it back to my family?

#P#

Tess slumps to the ground and rests her head against the alley wall. “We need to leave the city,” she says. “It’s too dangerous here, Day. You know it is. Arizona or Colorado would be safer—or come on, even Barstow. I don’t mind the outskirts.”

#P#

Yeah, yeah. I know. I look down. “I want to leave too.”

#P#

“But you won’t. I can see it on your face.”

#P#

We’re silent for a while. If it were up to me, I’d cross the whole country alone and escape into the Colonies first chance I got. I don’t mind risking my own life. But there are a dozen reasons I can’t go, and Tess knows it. It’s not like John and Mom can just pick up and leave their assigned jobs to flee with me, not without raising an alert. It’s not like Eden can just withdraw from his assigned school. Not unless they want to become fugitives like me.

#P#

“We’ll see,” I finally say.

#P#

Tess gives me a tragic smile. “Who do you think is looking for you?” she asks after a while. “How do they know we’re in the Lake sector?”

#PAGE 11#

#P#

“What are you going to do about it?”

#P#

I shrug. My bullet wound has begun to throb, and I lean against the wall for support. “I’m sure as hell not meeting him, whoever he is—but I got to admit, I’m curious to see what he has to say. What if he does have plague cures?”

#P#

Tess stares at me. It’s the same expression she wore the very first night I met her—hopeful, curious, and fearful all at once. “Well . . . can’t be any more dangerous than your crazy hospital break-in, yeah?”

#P#

I DON’T KNOW IF IT’S BECAUSE COMMANDER JAMESON has taken pity on me, or if she really does feel the loss of Metias, one of her most valued soldiers, but she helps me arrange his funeral—even though she’s never done that for one of her soldiers before. She refuses to say anything about why she chose to do it.

#P#

Wealthy families like ours always have elaborate funerals—Metias’s takes place inside a building with soaring baroque archways and stained-glass windows. They’ve covered the bare floors with white carpets; round white banquet tables overflowing with white lilacs fill the room. The only colors come from the Republic flags and circular gold Republic seal hanging behind the room’s front altar, the portrait of our glorious Elector looming above them all.

#P#

All the mourners wear their best whites. I have on an elaborate white gown, laced and corseted, with a silk overskirt and draped layers in the back. A tiny white-gold brooch of the Republic seal is clipped on its bodice. The hairdresser piled my hair high on my head, with loose ringlets cascading over one shoulder, and a white rose pinned behind my ear. Pearls line the choker wrapped around my throat. My eyelids are coated with glittering white eye shadow, my lashes are bathed in snow, the puffy redness under my eyes erased by shining white powder. Everything about me is stripped of color, just as Metias has been stripped from my life.

#P#

Metias once told me that it was not always this way, that only after the first floods and volcanic eruptions, after the Republic built a barrier along the warfront to keep the Colonies’ deserters from fleeing illegally into our territory, did people start mourning for the dead by wearing white. “After the first eruptions,” he said, “white volcanic ash rained from the sky for months. The dead and dying were covered in it. So now to wear white is to remember the dead.”

#P#

He told me this because I’d asked him what our parents’ funeral was like.

#P#

Now I wander among the guests, lost and aimless, responding to the sympathetic words of those around me with appropriate, practiced replies. “I am so sorry for your loss,” they say. I recognize some of Metias’s professors, fellow soldiers, and superiors. There are even a couple of my classmates from Drake. I’m surprised to see them—I’d never been good at making friends during my three years in college, considering my age and my hefty course load. But they’re here, some from afternoon drills and others from my Republic History 421 class. They take my hand and shake their heads. “First your parents, and now your brother. I can’t imagine how hard it is for you.”

#P#

No, you can’t. But I smile graciously and bow my head, because I know they mean well. “Thank you for coming,” I say. “It means a lot. I know Metias would be proud that he gave his life for his country.”

#P#

Sometimes I catch an admiring glance from a well-wisher across the room, which I ignore. I have no use for such sentiments. My outfit is not meant for them. Only for Metias do I wear this unnecessarily exquisite gown, to show without words how much I love him.

#P#

After a while, I sit at a table near the front of the room, facing the flower-strewn altar that’ll soon be occupied with a line of people reading their eulogies to my brother. I bow my head respectfully to the Republic flags. Then my eyes wander to the white coffin next to them. From here I can see just a hint of the person lying inside.

#P#

“You look lovely, June.”

#P#

I glance up to see Thomas bow, then take the seat beside me. He’s exchanged his military clothes for an elegant, white-vested suit, and his hair is freshly cut. I can tell the suit is brand-new. It must have cost him a fortune. “Thanks. You too.”

#P#

“That is—I mean, you look well for the circumstances, given all that’s happened.”

#P#

“I know what you mean.” I reach over and pat his hand to reassure him. He gives me a smile. He looks like he wants to say something more, then decides against it and turns his eyes away.

#P#

It takes a half hour for everyone to find their seats and another half hour for the waiters to start arriving with plates of food. I don’t eat anything. Commander Jameson sits opposite me on the far side of our banquet table, and between her and Thomas are three of my Drake classmates. I exchange a strained smile with them. On my left side is a man named Chian who organizes and oversees all Trials taken in Los Angeles. He administered mine. What I don’t understand is why he’s here—why he even cares that Metias died. He’s a former acquaintance of our parents, so his presence is not unexpected—but why right next to me?

#P#

Then I remember that Chian had mentored Metias before he joined Commander Jameson’s squad. Metias hated him.

#P#

The man now furrows his bushy eyebrows at me and claps a hand on my bare shoulder. It lingers there for a while. “How are you feeling, my dear?” he asks. His words distort the scars on his face—a slice across the bridge of his nose, and another jagged mark that goes from his ear to the bottom of his chin.

#P#

I manage a smile. “Better than expected.”

#P#

“Well, I’ll say.” He lets out a laugh that makes me cringe. His eyes look me up and down. “That dress polishes you up like a fresh snow blossom.”

#P#

It takes all my control to keep the smile on my face. Stay calm, I tell myself. Chian is not a man to make into an enemy.

#P#

“I loved your brother very much, you know,” he continues with overdone sympathy. “I remember him as a kid—you should’ve seen him. He used to run around your parents’ living room, holding out his hand like a little gun. He was destined to enter our squads.”

#P#

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

#P#

Chian saws off a huge piece of steak and shoves it in his mouth. “Metias was very attentive during the time I mentored him. Natural leader. Did he ever tell you about that?”

#P#

A memory flashes through my mind. The rainy night when Metias first started working for Chian. He had taken me and Thomas, who was still in school, out to the Tanagashi sector, where I ate my first bowl of pork edame, with spaghetti and sweet onion rolls. I remember the two of them were in full uniform—Metias with his jacket open and shirt hanging loose; Thomas neatly buttoned up, with his hair carefully slicked back. Thomas teased me over my messy pigtails, but Metias was quiet. Then, a week later, his apprenticeship with Chian ended abruptly. Metias had filed an appeal, and he was reassigned to Commander Jameson’s patrol.

#P#

“He said it was all classified,” I lie.

#P#

Chian laughs. “A good boy, that Metias was. A great apprentice. Imagine my disappointment when he was reassigned to the city patrols. He told me he just didn’t have the smarts to judge the Trials or organize the kids who finished taking them. Such a modest one. Always smarter than he thought he was—just like you.” He grins at me.

#P#

I nod. Chian made me take the Trial twice because I got a perfect score in record time (one hour ten minutes). He thought I had cheated. Not only do I have the only perfect score in the nation—I’m probably also the only kid who has ever taken the Trial twice. “You’re very kind,” I reply. “My brother was a better leader than I’ll ever be.”

#P#

Chian shushes me with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense, my dear,” he says. Then he leans uncomfortably close. There’s something oily and unpleasant about him. “I’m personally devastated by the way he died,” he says. “At the hands of that nasty boy. What a shame!” Chian narrows his eyes, making his eyebrows look even bushier. “I was so pleased when Commander Jameson told me that you’d be tracking him. His case needs a pair of fresh eyes, and you’re just the doll to do it. What a gem of a test mission, eh?”

#PAGE 12#

#P#

“Chian has a personal grudge against Day,” he whispers.

#P#

“Is that so?” I whisper back.

#P#

He nods. “Who do you think gave him that scar?”

#P#

Day did? I can’t keep the surprise from my face. Chian is a rather large man and has worked for the Trial’s administration for as long as I can remember. He’s a skilled official. Could a teenage boy really wound him like that? And get away with it? I glance over at Chian and study the scar. It’s a clean cut made with a smooth-edged blade. Must’ve happened quickly too, to be such a straight line—I can’t imagine Chian holding still while someone sliced him like that. For a moment, just a split second, I’m on Day’s side. I glance up at Commander Jameson, who stares at me as if she’s reading my thoughts. It makes me uneasy.

#P#

Thomas’s hand touches mine again. “Hey,” he says. “Day can’t hide from the government forever—sooner or later we’ll dig that street brat out and make an example out of him. He’s no match for you, especially when you put your mind to something.”

#P#

Thomas’s kind smile makes me weak, and suddenly I feel like Metias is the one sitting next to me and telling me everything is going to be okay, reassuring me that the Republic won’t fail me. My brother had once promised to stay at my side forever. I look away from Thomas and toward the altar, so he doesn’t see the tears in my eyes. I can’t smile back. I don’t think I’ll ever smile again.

#P#

“Let’s get this over with,” I whisper.

#P#

IT’S GODDY HOT EVEN THIS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON. I limp through the streets along the rim of Alta and Winter sector, along the lake and out in the open, lost in the crowded shuffle of other people. My wounds are still healing. I wear the army trousers our caretaker gave me with a thin collared shirt Tess found in a garbage bin. My cap is pulled low, and I’ve added to my disguise with a bandage patch over my left eye. Nothing unusual, really. Not in this sea of workers with factory injuries. Today I’m out on my own—Tess is keeping a low profile several streets down, tucked away on a hidden second-floor ledge. Never any reason to risk both of us if I don’t have to.

#P#

Familiar noises surround me: street vendors call out to passersby, selling boiled goose eggs and fried dough and hot dogs. Attendants linger at the doors of grocery stores and coffee shops, trying to win customers over. A decades-old car rattles by. The second-shift workers are slowly making their way home. A few girls notice me and blush when I look at them. Boats chug around the lake, careful to avoid the giant water turbines churning along the edge, and the shore’s flood sirens are quiet and unlit.

#P#

Some areas are blocked off. These I steer clear of—the soldiers have marked them as quarantine zones.

#P#

The loudspeakers that line the roofs of the buildings crackle and pop, and JumboTrons pause in their ads—or, in some cases, warnings about another Patriot rebel attack—to show a video of our flag. Everyone stops in the streets and goes still as the pledge starts.

#P#

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the great Republic of America, to our Elector Primo, to our glorious states, to unity against the Colonies, to our impending victory!

#P#

When the Elector Primo’s name comes on, we salute toward the capital. I mumble the pledge under my breath, but stay silent in the last two passages when the street police aren’t looking my way. I wonder what the pledge sounded like before we went to war against the Colonies.

#P#

When the pledge ends, life resumes. I go to a Chinese-themed bar covered in graffiti. The attendant at the door gives me a wide smile that’s missing several teeth and quickly ushers me in. “We have real Tsingtao beer today,” he murmurs. “Leftover cases from an imported gift sent straight to our glorious Elector himself. Goes until six o’clock.” His eyes dart around nervously as he says this. I just stare at him. Tsingtao beer? Yeah, right. My father would’ve laughed. The Republic didn’t sign an import deal with China (or, as the Republic likes to claim, “conquer China and take over its businesses”) just to send quality imports to the slum sectors. More likely, this guy’s pretty far behind in paying his bimonthly government taxes. No other reason to risk slapping fake Tsingtao labels on bottles of his home brew.

#P#

I thank the man, though, and step inside. This is as good a place as any to dig up information.

#P#

It’s dark. The air smells like pipe smoke and fried meat and gas lamps. I bump my way through the mess of tables and chairs—snatching food from a couple of unguarded plates as I go, then stuffing it beneath my shirt—until I reach the bar. Behind me, a large circle of customers are cheering on a Skiz fight. Guess this bar tolerates illegal gambling. If they’re smart, they’ll be ready at any minute to bribe the street police with their winnings—unless they’re willing to admit out loud that they’re making tax-free money.

#P#

The bartender doesn’t bother to check my age. She doesn’t even look at me. “What’ll it be?” she asks.

#P#

I shake my head. “Just some water, please,” I say. Behind us I hear a huge roar of cheers as one of the fighters goes down.

#P#

She gives me a skeptical glance. Her eyes immediately shift to the bandage on my face. “What happened to your eye, kid?”

#P#

“Terrace accident. I tend cows.”

#P#

She makes a disgusted face, but now she seems interested in me. “What a shame. You sure you don’t wanna beer to go with that? Must hurt.”

#P#

I shake my head again. “Thanks, cousin, but I don’t drink. I like to stay alert.”

#P#

She smiles at me. She’s kind of pretty in the flickering lamplight, with glittering green powder over her smooth-lidded eyes and a short, black, bobbed haircut. A vine tattoo snakes down her neck and disappears into her corseted shirt. A dirty pair of goggles—probably protection against bar fights—hangs around her neck. Kind of a shame. If I weren’t busy hunting for information, I’d take my time with this girl, chat her up and maybe get a kiss or three out of her.

#P#

“Lake boy, yeah?” she asks. “Just decided to waltz in here and break a few girls’ hearts? Or are you fighting?” She nods toward the Skiz fight.

#P#

I grin. “I’ll leave that to you.”

#P#

“What makes ya think I fight?”

#P#

I nod at the scars on her arms and the bruises on her hands. She gives me a slow smile.

#P#

I shrug after a moment. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those rings. Just taking a break from the sun. You seem like nice company, you know. I mean, as long as you don’t have the plague.”

#P#

A universal joke, but she still laughs. She leans on the counter. “I live on the sector’s edge. Pretty safe there so far.”

#P#

I lean toward her. “You’re lucky, then.” I grow serious. “A family I know had their door marked recently.”

#P#

“Sorry t’hear it.”

#P#

“I want to ask you something, just out of curiosity. You heard anything about a man around here in the last few days, someone who says he has plague meds?”

#P#

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, I heard about that. There’s a bunch of people trying to find him.”

#P#

“Do you know what he’s been telling people?”

#P#

She hesitates for a moment. I notice that she has a few tiny freckles on her nose. “I hear he’s telling people he wants to give a plague cure to someone—one person only. That this person will know who he’s talking about.”

#P#

I try to look amused. “Lucky person, yeah?”

#P#

She grins. “No kidding. He said he wants this person to meet him at midnight, tonight, at the ten-second place.”

#P#

“Ten-second place?”

#P#

The bartender shrugs. “Hell if I know what that means. Neither does anyone else, for that matter.” She leans over the counter toward me and lowers her voice. “Know what I think? I think this guy’s just crazy.”

#PAGE 13#

#P#

After several more minutes of flirting, I say good-bye to the bartender girl and leave. The sun’s still in the sky, and I can feel beads of sweat on my face. I know enough now. The government must’ve found something at the hospital and wants to lure me into a trap. They’ll send a guy to the ten-second place at midnight, and then place soldiers along the back alley. I bet they think I’m real desperate.

#P#

They’ll probably also bring along plague meds, though, to tempt me out into the open. I press my lips together in thought. Then I change the direction I’m walking. Off to the financial district.

#P#

I have an appointment to keep.

#P#

2329 HOURS.

#P#

BATALLA SECTOR.

#P#

72°F INDOORS.

#P#

#P#

THE LIGHTS IN BATALLA HALL ARE COLD AND FLUORESCENT. I dress in a bathroom on the observation and analysis floor. I’m wearing long black sleeves inside a striped black vest, slender black pants tucked into boots, and a long black robe that wraps around my shoulders and covers me like a blanket. A white stripe runs down the center of it, all the way to the floor. A black mask covers my face and infrared goggles shield my eyes. Other than that, all I have is a tiny microphone and an even tinier earpiece. And a gun. Just in case.

#P#

I need to look genderless, generic, unidentifiable. I need to look like a black-market dealer, someone rich enough to afford plague cures.

#P#

Metias would’ve shaken his head at me. You can’t go alone on a classified mission, June, he would say. You might get hurt. How ironic.

#P#

I tighten the clasp that holds my cloak in place (steel sprayed with bronze, probably imported from West Texas), then head off toward the stairs that will take me outside Batalla Hall and down toward the Arcadia bank where I’m supposed to meet Day.

#P#

My brother has been dead for 120 hours. It already feels like forever. Seventy hours ago, I gained clearance to search the Internet and found out as much about Day as I could. Forty hours ago, I laid out a plan for tracking Day to Commander Jameson. Thirty-two hours ago she approved it. I doubt she even remembers what it is. Thirty hours ago, I sent one scout to every plague-infected sector in Los Angeles—Winter, Blueridge, Lake, and Alta. They spread the word: someone has plague medicine for you, come to the ten-second place. Twenty-nine hours ago, I attended my brother’s funeral.

#P#

I do not plan on catching Day tonight. I don’t even plan on seeing him. He’ll know exactly where the ten-second place is, and that I’m either an agent sent by the government or by the black-market dealers that pay taxes to the government. He’s not going to show his face. Even Commander Jameson, who’s testing me with this first task, knows we won’t get a glimpse of him.

#P#

But I know he’s going to be there. He needs plague meds desperately enough. And him showing up is all I hope for tonight—a clue, a starting point, a narrower direction, something personal about this boy criminal.

#P#

I’m careful not to walk under the streetlamps. In fact, I would have traveled by rooftop if I weren’t going to the financial sector, where guards line the roofs. All around me the JumboTrons blare their colorful campaigns, the sound of their ads distorted and jolty from the city speakers. One of them shows an updated profile of Day—this time featuring a boy with long, black hair. Next to the JumboTrons are flickering streetlights, and under those walk crowds of night-shift workers, police, and merchants. Every now and then, a tank rolls through, followed by several platoons of troops. (They have blue stripes on their sleeves—soldiers back from the warfront, or soldiers rotating out to the warfront. They keep their guns by their sides, with both hands on the weapon.) They all look like Metias to me, and I have to breathe a little harder, walk a little faster, anything to stay focused.

#P#

I take the long way through Batalla, through the sector’s side roads and abandoned buildings, not stopping until I’m a good distance outside of military grounds.

#P#

The street police won’t know I’m on a mission. If they see me dressed like this, equipped with infrared goggles, they’ll question me for sure.

#P#

The Arcadia bank lies on a quiet street. I go around the bank’s back side until I’m standing in front of a parking lot at the end of an alleyway. There, I wait in the shadows. My goggles wash most of the color out of the scene. I look around and see rows of city speakers on the roofs, a stray cat whose tail twitches over the lid of a trash can, an abandoned kiosk with old anti-Colonies bulletins tacked all over it.

#P#

The clock on my visor says 2353 HOURS. I pass the time by forcing myself to think through Day’s history. Before the robbery at this bank, Day had already appeared on our records three times. Those were only the incidents where we found fingerprints—I can only guess at the number of other crimes he’s committed. I take a closer look at the bank’s alleyway. How did he break into this bank in ten seconds, with four armed guards at the back entrance? (The alley is narrow. He could have found enough footholds to jump his way up the walls to the second or third floors—all while using the guards’ weapons against them. Probably got them to shoot at each other. Probably smashed through a window. That would’ve taken just a few seconds. What he did once he got inside, I have no idea.)

#P#

I already know how agile Day is. Surviving a two-and-a-half-story fall proves that much. He won’t have a chance to do that tonight, though. I don’t care how light he is on his feet—you just don’t jump out of buildings and then expect to be able to walk properly afterward. Day won’t be scampering up walls and stairwells for at least another week.

#P#

Suddenly I tense up. It’s two minutes past midnight. A clicking sound echoes from somewhere far away, and the cat sitting on the trash can makes a run for it. It could be a cigarette lighter, a gun trigger, the speakers, or a flickering streetlight; it could be anything. I scan the roofs. Nothing yet.

#P#

But the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I know he’s here. I know he’s watching me.

#P#

“Come out,” I say. The tiny microphone at my mouth makes my voice sound like a man’s.

#P#

Silence. Not even the kiosk’s layers of paper bulletins move. There’s no wind tonight.

#P#

I remove a vial from a holster at my belt. My other hand doesn’t leave the handle of my gun. “I have what you need,” I say, and wave around the vial for emphasis.

#P#

Still nothing. This time, however, I hear what sounds like the faintest sigh. A breath. My eyes dart to the speakers lining the roofs. (That’s what the clicking sound was. He’s rewired the speakers so he can talk to me without giving away his location.) I smile behind my mask. It’s what I would have done.

#P#

“I know you need this,” I say, gesturing again at the vial. I turn it in my hands and hold it higher. “It has all its official labels, the stamp of approval. I assure you it’s the real thing.”

#P#

Another breath.

#P#

“Someone you care about will wish you’d come out to greet me.” I look at the time on my goggles. “It’s five past midnight. I’ll give you two minutes. Then I leave.”

#P#

The alley falls silent again. Every now and then, I hear another faint breath from the loudspeakers. My eyes shift from the time on my visor to the shadows of the roofs. He’s clever. I can’t tell where he’s broadcasting from. It could be on this street—it could be several blocks down, from a higher floor. But I know he’s close enough to see me himself.

#P#

The time on my visor shows 0007 HOURS. I turn, tuck the vial back onto my belt, and start to walk away.

#P#

“What do you want for the cure, cousin?”

#P#

The voice is barely a whisper, but through the speakers it sounds broken and startling, so crackly that I have trouble understanding him. Details race instantly through my mind. (Male. He has a light accent—he’s not from Oregon or Nevada or Arizona or New Mexico or West Texas or any other Republic state. Native Southern Californian. He uses the familiar term cousin, something Lake sector civilians often use. He’s close enough to have seen me put the vial away. He’s not so close that the speakers can catch his voice clearly. He must be on an adjacent block with a good vantage point—a high floor.)

#P#

Behind the details flashing through my mind emerges a black, rising hatred. This is the voice of my brother’s murderer. This may have been the last voice my brother heard.

#P#

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#PAGE 14#

#P#

I wait two seconds before speaking again. When I do, my voice is smooth and calm and shows no sign of my rage. “What do I want?” I ask him. “It depends. Do you have money?”

#P#

“Twelve hundred Notes.”

#P#

(Notes, not Republic gold. He robs the upper class but doesn’t have the ability to rob the extremely wealthy. He’s probably a one-man operation.) I laugh. “Twelve hundred Notes can’t buy you this vial. What else do you have? Valuables? Jewelry?”

#P#

Silence.

#P#

“Or do you have skills to offer, as I’m sure you do—”

#P#

“I don’t work for the government.”

#P#

His weak point. Naturally. “No offense. Just thought I’d ask. And how do you know I don’t work for someone else? Don’t you think you’re giving the government too much credit?”

#P#

A slight pause. Then the voice comes back. “Your cloak knot. Don’t know what it is, but it sure doesn’t look civilian.”

#P#

This surprises me a little. My cloak knot is indeed a Canto knot, a sturdy knot that military officials like to use. Apparently Day has some detailed knowledge of how government uniforms look. Impressive eye. I’m quick to cover up my hesitation. “Good to find another person who knows what a Canto knot is. But I travel a lot, my friend. I see and know a lot of people, people who I might not be affiliated with.”

#P#

Silence.

#P#

I wait, listening for another breath over the speakers. Nothing. Not even a click. I didn’t act fast enough, and the brief hesitation in my voice was enough to convince him that he couldn’t trust me. I tighten the cloak around me and realize that I’ve started to sweat in the warmth of the night. My heart hammers against my chest.

#P#

Another voice sounds in my head. This time it comes from my tiny earpiece. “Are you there, Iparis?” It’s Commander Jameson. I can hear the buzz of other people in her office in the background.

#P#

“He left,” I whisper. “But he gave me clues.”

#P#

“Tipped him off about whom you work for, didn’t you? Well, it’s your first time on your own. I have the recordings at any rate. See you back at Batalla Hall.” Her rebuke stings a little. Before I can answer, the static cuts off.

#P#

I wait for another minute, just to be sure I hadn’t misread Day’s exit. Silence. I turn and start back down the alley. I’d wanted to tell Commander Jameson what the easiest solution would be—to simply round up everyone in the Lake sector whose doors are marked. That would draw Day out of hiding. But I can already hear Commander Jameson’s retort. Absolutely not, Iparis. It’s far too expensive, and headquarters won’t approve. You’ll have to think of something else. I glance back once, half expecting to see a black-clad figure following me. But the alley is empty.

#P#

I won’t be allowed to force Day to come to me—which leaves me only one option. I’ll have to go to him.

#P#

“EAT SOMETHING, YEAH?”

#P#

Tess’s voice shakes me out of my vigil. I look away from the lake to see her holding out a piece of bread and cheese, gesturing for me to take it. I should be hungry. I’ve only eaten half an apple since my encounter with the strange government agent last night. But somehow the bread and cheese—still fresh from the shop where Tess had traded a few precious Notes for it—doesn’t seem tempting.

#P#

I take it anyway. Far be it from me to waste perfectly good food, especially when we should be saving everything we have for plague meds.

#P#

Tess and I are sitting in the sand underneath a pier, at the part of the lake that crosses into our sector. We keep ourselves pressed as closely against the side of the bank as we can so idle soldiers and drunk workers above can’t see us past all the grass and rocks. We blend into the shadows. From where we sit, we can taste the salt in the air and see the lights of downtown Los Angeles reflected on the water. Ruins of older buildings dot the lake, buildings abandoned by business owners and residents when the floodwaters rose. Giant waterwheels and turbines churn along the water’s edge behind veils of smoke. This is probably my favorite view from our shabby, beautiful little Lake sector.

#P#

I take that back. It’s my favorite and least-favorite view. Because while the electric lights of downtown make for some nice sightseeing, I can also see the Trial stadium looming off in the east.

#P#

“You still have time,” Tess says to me. She scoots close enough for me to feel her bare arm against mine. Her hair smells like bread and cinnamon from the shop. “Probably a month or more. We’ll find plague medicine before then, I’m sure of it.”

#P#

For a girl with no family and no home, Tess is surprisingly optimistic. I try to smile for her sake. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe the hospital will let down its guard after a couple weeks.” But in my heart I know better.

#P#

Earlier in the day, I risked a peek at my mother’s house. The strange X still marked the door. My mother and John seemed okay, at least strong enough to stand and walk around. But Eden . . . this time Eden was lying in bed with a cloth on his forehead. Even from a distance, I could tell that he’d already lost some weight. His skin looked wan, and his voice sounded weak and hoarse. When I met John later behind our house, he told me that Eden hadn’t eaten since the last time I came by. I reminded John to stay out of Eden’s room when he could. Who knows how this cracked plague is spreading. John warned me not to pull any more stunts, in case I get myself killed. I had to laugh at that. John won’t ever say it to my face, but I know that I am Eden’s only chance.

#P#

The plague might end Eden’s life before he even gets to take the Trial.

#P#

Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Eden would never have to stand outside our door on his tenth birthday, waiting for a bus to take him to the Trial stadium. He’d never have to follow dozens of other children up the stadium stairs and into the inner circle, or run laps while Trial admins study his breathing and posture, or answer pages and pages of stupid multiple-choice questions, or survive an interview in front of a half circle of impatient officials. He’d never have to wait in one of several groups afterward, unsure which groups would return home and which group would be sent off to the so-called “labor camps.”

#P#

I don’t know. If worse came to worst, maybe the plague would be a more merciful way to go.

#P#

“Eden always gets sick, you know,” I say after a while. I take a large bite out of the bread and cheese. “He almost died once when he was a baby. He caught some kind of pox, and had fevers and rashes and cried nonstop for a week. The soldiers came close to marking our door. But it obviously wasn’t the plague, and no one else seemed to have it.” I shake my head. “John and I never got sick.”

#P#

Tess doesn’t smile this time. “Poor Eden.” After a pause, she continues. “I was pretty sick when you first met me. Remember how grimy I looked?”

#P#

Suddenly I feel guilty for talking about my problems so much over the last few days. At least I have a family to worry about. I put an arm around her shoulder. “Yeah, you looked pretty awful.”

#P#

Tess laughs, but her eyes stay focused on the downtown lights. She leans her head on my shoulder. It’s the way she’s leaned against me since the very first week I knew her, when I’d spotted her in an alley in Nima sector.

#P#

I still don’t know what made me stop and talk to her that afternoon. Maybe the heat had made me soft, or maybe I was just in a good mood because I’d found a restaurant that had thrown out an entire day’s worth of old sandwiches.

#P#

“Hey,” I called out to her.

#P#

Two more heads popped up out of the garbage bin. I flinched in surprise. Two of them, an older woman and a teenage boy, immediately scrambled out of the mess and ran down the alley. The third, a girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old, stayed where she was, trembling when she saw me. She was skinny as a rail, with a tattered shirt and trousers. Her hair was short and blunt, cut off abruptly right below her chin, and red in the sunlight.

#P#

I waited for a moment, not wanting to scare her like I had the others. “Hey,” I said again, “mind if I join you?”

#P#

She stared back at me without a word. I could barely make out her face because of all the soot on it.

#PAGE 15#

#P#

The instant I got within ten feet of the girl, she let out a strangled cry and darted away. She ran so fast that she tripped, falling onto the asphalt on her hands and knees. I limped over to her. My old knee injury was worse back then—and I can remember stumbling in my rush. “Hey!” I said. “Are you all right?”

#P#

She jerked away and held up her scratched hands to shield her face. “Please,” she said. “Please, please.”

#P#

“Please what?” Then I sighed, embarrassed by my irritation. Already I could see tears welling up in her eyes. “Stop crying. I’m not going to hurt you.” I knelt down beside her. At first she whimpered and started to crawl away, but when I didn’t move, she paused to stare at me. Both of her knees had the skin ripped right off them, and the flesh underneath was scarlet and raw.

#P#

“You live close by?” I asked her.

#P#

She nodded. Then, as if she had remembered something, she shook her head. “No,” she said.

#P#

“Can I help you get home?”

#P#

“I don’t have a home.”

#P#

“You don’t? Where are your parents?”

#P#

She shook her head again. I sighed and dropped my canvas bag to the ground, then held out a hand to her. “Come on,” I said. “You don’t want two infected knees. I’ll help you clean them up and then you can be on your way again. You can have some of my food too. Pretty good deal, right?”

#P#

It took her a long time to put her hand in mine. “Okay,” she whispered, so softly that I could barely hear her.

#P#

That night, we camped out behind a pawn shop that had a pair of old chairs and a ripped-up couch lying in its alley. I cleaned the girl’s knees with alcohol stolen from a bar, letting her bite down on a rag so she wouldn’t shriek and draw attention to us. Other than when I was tending to her scrapes, she never let me get near her. Whenever my hand accidentally brushed her hair or bumped her arm, she would flinch as if burned by steam from a kettle. Finally I just gave up trying to talk to her. I let her have the couch, while I laid out my shirt as a pillow and tried to get comfortable on the pavement.

#P#

“If you want to leave in the morning, just go,” I said to her. “You don’t have to wake me up or say good-bye or anything.” My eyelids were growing heavy, but she stayed wide awake, staring unblinkingly at me, even as I fell asleep.

#P#

She was still there in the morning. She followed me around as I scavenged in garbage bins, picking out old clothes and edible bits of leftover food. I tried asking her to leave. I even tried shouting at her. An orphan would be a huge inconvenience. But although I made her cry a few times, when I looked over my shoulder she’d still be there, trailing me a short distance away.

#P#

Two nights later, as we sat together by a crude fire, she finally spoke to me. “My name is Tess,” she whispered. Then she studied my face, like she wanted to guess my reaction.

#P#

I only shrugged. “Good to know,” I said.

#P#

And that was that.

#P#

Tess bolts out of her sleep. Her arm whacks my head.

#P#

“Ouch,” I mutter as I rub my forehead. Pain runs through my healing arm, and I hear the silver bullets Tess took from my clothes clink together in my pocket. “If you wanted me to wake up, you could’ve just tapped me.”

#P#

She holds a finger up to her lips. Now I’m on the alert. We’re still sitting underneath the pier, but it’s probably a couple hours before dawn, and the skyline has already gone dark. The only light comes from several antique streetlamps lining the edge of the lake. I glance at Tess. Her eyes glint in the darkness.

#P#

“Did you hear something?” she whispers.

#P#

I frown. Usually I can hear something suspicious before Tess does, but this time I hear nothing at all. We both stay still for a long moment. I hear the occasional lap of waves. The churning sound of metal pushing water. Now and then, a passing car.

#P#

I look at Tess again. “What did you hear the first time?”

#P#

“It sounded like . . . something gurgling,” she whispers.

#P#

Before I can think much about it, I hear footsteps and then a voice approaching the pier above us. We both shrink farther into the shadows. It’s a man’s voice, and his footsteps sound oddly heavy. I realize a second later that the man is walking in step with someone else. A pair of street police.

#P#

I push myself farther back against the bank, and some of the loose dirt and rocks give way. They roll silently down into the sand. I keep pushing until my back hits a surface that’s hard and smooth. Tess does the same.

#P#

“There’s something brewing,” one of the police says. “Plague’s popped up in the Zein sector this time.”

#P#

Their footsteps clomp overhead and I see their figures walk along the beginning of the pier. Off in the distance, the first signs of light are turning the horizon a murky gray.

#P#

“I’ve never heard of the plague showing up there.”

#P#

“Must be a stronger strain.”

#P#

“What are they going to do?”

#P#

I try to hear what the other policeman has to say, but by now the two have walked far enough that their voices have turned to murmurs. I take a deep breath. The Zein sector is a good thirty miles away from here—but what if the strange red mark on my mother’s door means that they’re infected with this new strain? And what will the Elector do about it?

#P#

“Day,” Tess whispers.

#P#

I look at her. She turns against the bank so that her back now faces out toward the lake. She points at the deep indent we’ve made in the bank. When I turn around, I see what she’s pointing to.

#P#

The hard surface I’d had my back against is actually a sheet of metal. When I brush away more of the rocks and dirt, I see that the metal is lodged deep in the bank, so that it’s probably what’s holding the bank up in the first place. I squint at the surface.

#P#

Tess looks at me. “It’s hollow.”

#P#

“Hollow?” I put my ear against the ice-cold metal. A wave of noise hits me—the gurgling and hissing sound that Tess heard earlier. This isn’t just a metal structure to hold up the lake’s shores. When I pull away from it and look closer at the metal, I notice symbols carved on its surface.

#P#

One of these is the Republic’s flag, imprinted faintly against the metal. Another is a small red number:

#P#

318

#P#

“I SHOULD BE THE ONE GOING OUT THERE. NOT YOU.”

#P#

I grit my teeth and try not to look at Thomas. His words could have come right out of Metias’s mouth. “I’ll look less suspicious than you,” I reply. “People may find it easier to trust me.” We’re standing in front of a window in Batalla Hall’s north wing, watching Commander Jameson at work on the other side of the glass. Today they caught a spy from the Colonies who was secretly spreading propaganda about “how the Republic is lying to you!” Spies are usually shipped out to Denver, but if they’re caught in a big city like Los Angeles, we take them before the capital does. He’s dangling upside down in the interrogation room right now. Commander Jameson has a pair of scissors in her hand.

#P#

I tilt my head a little as I look at the spy. I already hate him as much as I hate anything about the Colonies—he’s not affiliated with the Patriots, that’s for sure, but that just makes him more of a coward. (So far, every Patriot we’ve hunted down has killed himself before getting taken in.) This spy’s young, probably in his late twenties. About the same age my brother was. I’m slowly growing used to talking about Metias in past tense.

#P#

From the corner of my eye, I can see that Thomas is still looking at me. Commander Jameson officially promoted him to fill my brother’s position, but Thomas has little power over what I choose to do on this test mission, and it drives him crazy. He would have balked at letting me go undercover in the Lake sector for days on end, without a pair of strong backups and a team to follow me.

#P#

But it’s going to happen anyway, starting tomorrow morning.

#P#

“Look. Don’t worry about me.” Through the glass, I see the spy arch his back in agony. “I can take care of myself. Day isn’t a fool—if I have a team following me through the city, he’ll notice it in no time.”

#PAGE 16#

#P#

I smile at him. “Thanks.” He doesn’t look back at me, but I can see his lips tilt up at the edges. Maybe he’s remembering when I used to tag along after him and Metias, asking them inane questions about how the military worked.

#P#

Behind the glass, the spy suddenly yells something at Commander Jameson and thrashes violently against his chains. She glances over at us and motions us in with a flip of her hand. I don’t hesitate. Thomas and I, and another soldier standing close to the interrogation room’s door, hurry inside and spread out near the back wall. Instantly I feel how stuffy and hot the room is. I look on as the prisoner continues to scream.

#P#

“What’d you say to him?” I ask Commander Jameson.

#P#

She looks at me. Her eyes are ice-cold. “I told him that our airships will target his hometown next.” She turns back to the prisoner. “He’ll start cooperating if he knows what’s good for him.”

#P#

The spy glares at each of us in turn. Blood runs from his mouth to his forehead and hair and drips onto the floor beneath him. Whenever he thrashes, Commander Jameson stomps on the chain around his neck and chokes him until he stops.

#P#

Now he snarls and spits blood at our boots, making me wipe mine against the ground in disgust.

#P#

Commander Jameson bends down and smiles at him. “Let’s start again, shall we? What’s your name?”

#P#

The spy looks away from her and says nothing.

#P#

Commander Jameson sighs and nods to Thomas. “My hands are tired,” she says. “You do the honors.”

#P#

“Yes, ma’am.” Thomas salutes and steps forward. He tightens his jaw, then balls up his fist and punches the spy hard in the stomach. The spy’s eyes bulge out, and he coughs up more blood onto the floor. I distract myself by studying the details of his outfit. (Brass buttons, military boots, a blue pin on his sleeve. Which means he had disguised himself as a soldier, and we caught him near San Diego, the only city that requires everyone to wear those blue pins. I can tell what gave him away too. One of the brass buttons looks slightly flatter than those made in the Republic. He must have stitched on that button by himself—a button from an old Colonies uniform. Stupid. A mistake only a Colonies spy would make.)

#P#

“What’s your name?” Commander Jameson asks him again. Thomas flips open a knife and grabs one of the spy’s fingers.

#P#

The spy swallows hard. “Emerson.”

#P#

“Emerson what? Be specific.”

#P#

“Emerson Adam Graham.”

#P#

“Mr. Emerson Adam Graham, of East Texas.” Commander Jameson says it in a light, coaxing voice. “A pleasure to meet you, young sir. Tell me, Mr. Graham, why did the Colonies send you over to our fine Republic? To spread their lies?”

#P#

The spy lets out a weak laugh. “Fine Republic,” he snaps. “Your Republic won’t last another decade. And all the better, too—once the Colonies take over your land, they’ll make better use of it than you have—”

#P#

Thomas hits the spy across the face with the hilt of his knife. A tooth skids across the floor. When I look back at Thomas, his hair has fallen across his face and a cruel pleasure has replaced his usual kindness. I frown. I haven’t seen this look on Thomas’s face often; it chills me.

#P#

Commander Jameson stops him before he can hit the spy again. “It’s all right. Let us hear what our friend has to say against the Republic.”

#P#

The spy’s face is scarlet from hanging upside down for too long. “You call this a republic? You kill your own people and torture those who used to be your brothers?” I roll my eyes at that. The Colonies want us to think that letting them take over is a good thing. Like they’re annexing us or doing us some kind of favor. That’s how they see us, a poor little fringe nation, as if they’re the more powerful one. That idea is in their best interest, after all, since I hear the floods have claimed much more of their land than ours. That’s all it’s ever been about. Land, land, land. But becoming a union—that has never happened, and that will never happen. We’ll defeat them first or die trying. “I’ll tell you nothing. You can try as hard as you want, but I’ll tell you nothing.”

#P#

Commander Jameson smiles at Thomas, who smiles back. “Well, you heard Mr. Graham,” she says. “Try as hard as you want.”

#P#

Thomas goes to work on him, and after a while, the other soldier in the room has to join him to hold the spy in place. I force myself to look on as they try to pry information out of him. I need to learn this, to familiarize myself with this. My ears ring from the spy’s screams. I ignore the fact that the spy’s hair is straight and dark like my own, and his skin is pale, and his youth reminds me of Metias over and over again. I tell myself that Metias is not the one whom Thomas is now torturing. That would be impossible.

#P#

Metias can’t be tortured. He is already dead.

#P#

That night, Thomas escorts me back to my apartment and kisses me on the cheek before he leaves. He tells me to be careful, and that he will be monitoring anything that transmits through my microphone. “Everyone will keep an eye on you,” he reassures me. “You’re not alone out there unless you choose to be.”

#P#

I manage to smile back. I ask him to take care of Ollie while I’m gone.

#P#

When I’m finally inside the apartment, I curl up on the couch and rest my arm on Ollie’s back. He’s sleeping soundly, but has pressed himself tightly against the side of the couch. He probably feels Metias’s absence as much as I do. On the coffee table, stacks of our parents’ old photos from Metias’s bedroom closet are strewn across the glass. So are Metias’s journals, and a booklet where he used to save little mementos of the things we did together—an opera, late-night dinners, early practices at the track. I’ve been looking through them ever since Thomas left, hoping that the thing Metias had wanted to talk to me about is mentioned somewhere. I flip through Metias’s writing and reread the little notes Dad liked to leave at the bottom of their photos. The most recent one shows our parents standing with a young Metias in front of Batalla Hall. All three are making thumbs-up gestures. Metias’s future career is here! March 12th. I stare at the date. It was taken several weeks before they died.

#P#

My recorder sits on the edge of the coffee table. I snap my fingers twice, then listen to Day’s voice over and over. What face matches up to this voice? I try to imagine how Day looks. Young and athletic, probably, and lean from years on the streets. The voice sounds so crackled and distorted from the speakers that there are parts I can’t understand.

#P#

“Hear that, Ollie?” I whisper. Ollie snores a little and rubs his head against my hand. “That’s our guy. And I’m going to get him.”

#P#

I fall asleep with Day’s words ringing in my ears.

#P#

Legend

#P#

0625 HOURS.

#P#

I’m in the Lake sector, watching the strengthening daylight paint the churning waterwheels and turbines gold. A layer of smoke hovers perpetually over the water’s edge. Farther across the lake I can see downtown Los Angeles sitting right next to the shore. A street policeman approaches and tells me to stop loitering, to keep moving. I nod wordlessly and continue along the shore.

#P#

From a distance, I blend in completely with those walking around me. My half-sleeve collared shirt came from a thrift emporium at the border between Lake and Winter. My trousers are torn and smeared with dirt—my boots’ leather is flaking off. I’m very careful about the type of knot I use to tie my shoelaces. It’s a simple Rose knot, something any worker would use. I’ve pulled my hair back into a tight, high ponytail. I wear a newsboy cap over it.

#P#

Day’s pendant necklace sits snugly in my pocket.

#PAGE 17#

#P#

Several men grin at me as I pass by. One even calls out to me. I ignore them and keep going. What a bunch of cons, men who had barely passed their Trials. I wonder if I can catch the plague from these people, even though I’m vaccinated. Who knows where they’ve been.

#P#

Then I stop myself. Metias had told me never to judge the poor like that. Well, he’s a better person than I am, I think bitterly.

#P#

The tiny microphone inside my cheek vibrates a little. Then a faint sound comes from my earpiece. “Ms. Iparis.” Thomas’s voice comes out as a tiny hum that only I can hear. “Everything working?”

#P#

“Yup,” I murmur. The little microphone picks up my throat’s vibrations. “In central Lake now. I’m going dark for a bit.”

#P#

“Got it,” Thomas says, and his side falls silent.

#P#

I make a clicking sound with my tongue to turn off my microphone.

#P#

I spend most of this first morning pretending to dig around in the garbage bins. From the other beggars I hear stories about plague victims, which areas the police seem most nervous about, and which have started to recover. They talk about the best places to find food, the best places to find fresh water. The best places to hide during hurricanes. Some of the beggars look too young to have even taken the Trial. The youngest ones talk about their parents or how to pickpocket a soldier.

#P#

But no one talks about Day.

#P#

The hours drag on into evening, then night. When I find a quiet alley to rest in, with a few other beggars already asleep in the garbage bins, I curl into a dark corner and click my microphone on. Then I take out Day’s pendant necklace from my pocket, holding it up slightly so I can study its smooth bumps.

#P#

“Calling it a night,” I murmur. My throat barely vibrates.

#P#

My hearing piece crackles faintly with static. “Ms. Iparis?” Thomas says. “Any luck today?”

#P#

“Nope, no luck. I’ll try some public places tomorrow.”

#P#

“Okay. We’ll have people over here twenty-four seven.”

#P#

By “people over here twenty-four seven,” I know Thomas means he’s the only one there, listening for me. “Thanks,” I whisper. “Going dark.” I click my microphone off. My stomach rumbles. I pull out a slice of chicken I found in the back of a café’s kitchen and force myself to munch on it, ignoring the slime of cold grease. If I need to live like a Lake citizen, I’ll have to eat like one. Maybe I should get a job, I think. The idea makes me snort a little.

#P#

When I finally fall asleep, I have a bad dream, and Metias is in it.

#P#

I find nothing substantial the next day, or the day after that. My hair grows tangled and dull in the heat and smoke, and dirt has started to coat my face. When I look at my reflection in the lake, I realize that I look exactly like a street beggar now. Everything feels dirty. On the fourth day, I make my way to the rim of Lake and Blueridge and decide to spend my time wandering through the bars.

#P#

That’s when something happens. I stumble into a Skiz fight.

#P#

THE RULES FOR WATCHING—AND BETTING ON—a Skiz fight are simple enough.

#P#

1. You pick who you think will win.

#P#

2. You bet on that person.

#P#

That’s about it. The only problem that comes up is when you’re too infamous to risk placing a public bet and possibly getting picked up by the police.

#P#

This afternoon I’m crouched behind the chimney of a crumbling, one-story warehouse. From here I can see the crowd of people gathered in the abandoned building next door. I’m even close enough to make out some of their conversations.

#P#

And Tess. Tess is down there with them, her delicate frame nearly lost in the shuffle, with a pouch of our money and a smile on her face. I watch as she listens to other gamblers discuss the fighters. She asks them a few questions of her own. I don’t dare take my eyes off her. Street police who are unhappy with their bribes sometimes break up Skiz fights, arresting people as they go, and as a result, I never stand with the crowd when Tess and I watch the fights. If they catch me and fingerprint me, it’s over for both of us. Tess, though, is slender and wily. She can escape a raid much more easily than I can. But that doesn’t mean I’ll leave her on her own.

#P#

“Keep moving, cousin,” I mutter under my breath as Tess stops to laugh at some young gambler’s joke. Don’t get too close to her, you trot.

#P#

A noise comes from one end of the crowd. My eyes flick there for a second. One of the fighters is stirring up the onlookers by waving her arms and yelling. I smile. That girl is named Kaede, or so the crowd’s chants tell me. Kaede is the very same bartender I met days ago while passing through the Alta sector. She flexes her wrists, then bounces on her feet and shakes out her arms.

#P#

Kaede has already won a match. Going by the unspoken rules of Skiz, she must now fight until she loses a round—until her opponent throws her to the ground. Each time she wins, she gets a cut of the overall bet on her opponent. My eyes wander to the girl she just picked out to be her next challenger. The girl is olive-skinned, with furrowed brows and an uncertain expression. I roll my eyes. Surely the crowd must know that this fight’s going to be a no-brainer. This challenger will be lucky if Kaede lets her live.

#P#

Tess waits for a moment when no one is paying attention to her, then glances up quickly in my direction. I hold up one finger. She grins, then winks at me and looks back to the crowd. She hands money to the person organizing bets—a big, burly guy. We’ve cast one thousand Notes, almost all our money, in favor of Kaede.

#P#

The fight lasts for less than a minute. Kaede strikes early and hard, lunging out and striking the other girl viciously across the face. The other girl wavers. Kaede toys with her like a cat playing with her food before lashing out again with her fist. The challenger crashes to the ground, hitting her head on the cement floor, where she lies in a daze. Knockout. The crowd cheers, and several people help the girl stumble out of the ring. I exchange a brief smile with Tess, who gathers up our winnings and stuffs it into the pouch.

#P#

Fifteen hundred Notes. I swallow hard, warning myself not to get too excited. One step closer to a vial of cure.

#P#

My attention is back on the cheering crowd. Kaede flips her hair at the audience and strikes a mock pose for them, which makes them go wild. “Who’s next?”

#P#

The crowd chants back. “Choose! Choose!”

#P#

Kaede looks slowly around the circle, shaking her head or sometimes tilting it to one side. I keep my eyes on Tess. She stands on her tiptoes behind several taller people, straining for a good look. Then she taps them hesitantly on their shoulders, says something, and pushes her way forward. I tighten my jaw at the sight. Next time I’ll join her. Then she can sit on my shoulders and finally get to see the fights, instead of calling unwanted attention to herself.

#P#

A second later, I bolt upright. Tess has pushed her way past one of the larger gamblers. He shouts something at her, something angry, and before Tess can apologize, I see him shove her roughly into the ring’s center. She stumbles, and the crowd roars with laughter.

#P#

Anger boils up in my chest. Kaede seems amused by the whole thing. “Is that a challenge, kid?” she shouts. A grin breaks out on her face. “Ya look like fun.” Tess looks around, bewildered. She tries to take a step back into the crowd, but they block her path. When I see Kaede nod her head in Tess’s direction, I rise up from my crouch. This trot’s going to choose Tess.

#P#

Oh, hell no. Not while I’m watching. Not if Kaede wants to live.

#P#

Suddenly, a voice rings out from below. I pause. Some girl has made her way to the front of the ring, where she stares at Kaede. She rolls her eyes. “Doesn’t seem like a fair fight,” she calls out.

#P#

Kaede laughs. There’s a brief silence.

#P#

Then Kaede shouts back, “Who the hell you think ya are, talking t’me like that? Think you’re better?” She points at the girl, and the crowd lets out a cheer. I see Tess scurry into the safety of the crowd. This new girl has taken Tess’s place, whether she meant to or not.

#P#

I let out a long breath. When I’ve managed to calm down, I take a closer look at Kaede’s new opponent.

#PAGE 18#

#P#

For a brief moment, I’m lost to my surroundings.

#P#

The girl shakes her head at Kaede. This surprises me too—I’ve never seen anyone refuse to fight. Everyone knows the rules: if you’re chosen, you fight. This girl doesn’t seem to fear the crowd’s wrath. Kaede laughs at her and says something I can’t quite make out. Tess hears it, though, and casts me a quick, concerned glance.

#P#

This time the girl nods. The crowd lets out another cheer, and Kaede smiles. I lean a little bit out from behind the chimney. Something about this girl . . . I don’t know what it is. But her eyes burn in the light, and although it’s hot and might be my imagination, I think I see a small smile on the girl’s face.

#P#

Tess shoots a questioning look at me. I hesitate for a split second, then hold up one finger again. I’m grateful to this mystery girl for helping Tess out, but with my money on the line, I decide to play it safe. Tess nods, then casts our bet in favor of Kaede.

#P#

But the instant the new girl steps into the circle and I see her stance . . . I know I’ve made a big mistake. Kaede strikes like a bull, a battering ram.

#P#

This girl strikes like a viper.

#P#

I’M NOT WORRIED ABOUT LOSING THIS FIGHT.

#P#

I’m more worried that I’ll accidentally kill my opponent.

#P#

If I run right now, though, I’m a dead girl.

#P#

I silently scold myself—what a game to involve myself in. When I first saw this crowd of gamblers, I’d wanted to leave it alone. I’d wanted nothing to do with brawls. Not a good place to get caught by street police and taken downtown for questioning. But then I’d thought that maybe I could pick up some valuable information from a group like this—so many locals, some who might even know Day personally. Surely Day isn’t a complete stranger to everyone in Lake, and if anyone knows who he is, it’s the crowd that watches illegal Skiz fights.

#P#

But I should not have said anything about the skinny girl they shoved into the ring. I should have let her fend for herself.

#P#

It’s too late now.

#P#

The girl named Kaede tilts her head at me and grins as we face each other in the ring. I take a deep breath. Already she has started to circle me, stalking me like prey. I study her stance. She steps forward with her right foot. She’s left-handed. Usually this would work to her advantage and throw off her opponents, but I’ve trained for this. I shift the way I walk. My ears are drowning in the noise.

#P#

I let her strike first. She bares her teeth at me and lunges forward at full speed, her fist raised. But I can see her preparing to kick. I sidestep. Her kick whooshes past me. I use her momentum against her and strike her hard when her back’s turned. She loses her balance and nearly falls. The crowd cheers.

#P#

Kaede whirls around to face me again. This time her smile is gone—I’ve succeeded in angering her. She lunges at me again. I block her first two punches, but her third punch catches me across the jaw and makes my head spin.

#P#

Every muscle in my body wants to end this now. But I force my temper down. If I fight too well, people might get suspicious. My style is too precise for a simple street beggar.

#P#

I let Kaede hit me one last time. The crowd roars. She starts smiling again, her confidence returning. I wait until she’s ready to charge. Then I dart forward, duck down, and trip her. She doesn’t see it coming—she falls heavily on her back. The crowd screams in approval.

#P#

Kaede forces herself onto her feet, even though most Skiz fights would’ve called her fall the end of the round. She wipes a bit of blood from her mouth. Before she can even catch her breath properly, she lets out an angry shout and lunges for me again. I should’ve seen the tiny flash of light near her wrist. Kaede’s fist punches hard into my side, and I feel a terrible, sharp pain. I shove her away. She winks at me and starts circling again. I hold my side—and that’s when I feel something warm and wet at my waist. I look down.

#P#

A stab wound. Only a serrated knife could have torn my skin that way. I narrow my eyes at Kaede. Weapons are not supposed to be part of a Skiz fight . . . but this is hardly a fight where the crowd follows all the rules.

#P#

The pain makes me light-headed and angry. No rules? So be it.

#P#

When Kaede comes at me again, I dart away and twist her arm in a tight hold. In one move, I shatter it. She screams in pain. When she tries to pull away, I continue to hold on, twisting the broken arm behind her back until I see the blood drain from her face. A knife slips out from the bottom of her tank top and clatters to the ground. (A serrated knife, just as I thought. Kaede is not a normal street beggar. She has the skills to get her hands on a nice weapon like that—which means she might be in the same line of business as Day. If I weren’t undercover, I’d arrest her right now and take her in for questioning.) My wound burns, but I grit my teeth and maintain my grip on her arm.

#P#

Finally Kaede taps me frantically with her other hand. I release her. She collapses to the ground on her knees and her good arm. The crowd goes nuts. I clutch my bleeding side as tightly as I can, and when I look around, I see money exchanging hands. Two people help Kaede out of the ring (she shoots me a look of hatred before she turns away), and the rest of the onlookers start up their chant.

#P#

“Choose! Choose! Choose!”

#P#

Maybe it’s the dizzying pain from my wound that makes me reckless. I can’t contain my anger anymore. I turn without a word, roll my shirtsleeves back up to my elbows, and flip my collar up. Then I step out of the ring and start shoving my way out of the circle.

#P#

The crowd’s chant changes. I hear the boos start. I’m tempted to click my microphone on and tell Thomas to send soldiers, but I keep silent. I’d promised myself not to call for backup unless I had no choice, and I’m certainly not going to ruin my cover over a street brawl.

#P#

When I’ve managed to walk outside the building, I risk a look behind me. Half a dozen of the onlookers are following me, and most of them look enraged. They’re the gamblers, I think, the ones who care the most. I ignore them and continue to walk.

#P#

“Get back here!” one of them yells. “You can’t just leave like that!”

#P#

I break into a run. Curse this knife wound. I reach a large trash bin and swing myself up onto it, then get ready to jump to a second-floor windowsill. If I can climb high enough, they won’t be able to catch me. I leap as far as I can and manage to grab the edge of the windowsill with one hand.

#P#

But my wound has slowed me down. Someone grabs my leg and yanks hard. I lose my grip, scrape myself against the wall, and crash to the ground. I hit my head hard enough to send the world spinning. Then they’re on me, dragging me to my feet and back to the screaming crowd. I fight to clear my head. Spots explode across my vision. I try to click my microphone on, but my tongue feels slow and covered with sand. Thomas, I whisper, but it comes out as Metias. I blindly reach out a hand for my brother, and then I remember that he’s no longer there to take it.

#P#

Suddenly I hear a pop and a few shrieks, and in the next instant they release me. I fall back to the ground. I try scrambling to my feet, but stumble and fall again. Where did all this dust come from? I squint, trying to see through it. I can still hear the noise and chaos from the onlookers. Someone must’ve set off a dust bomb.

#P#

Then there’s a voice telling me to get up. When I look to my side, I see a boy holding out his hand to me. He has bright blue eyes, dirt on his face, and a beat-up old cap on, and at this moment, I think he might be the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.

#P#

“Come on,” he urges. I take his hand.

#P#

In the dust and chaos, we hurry down the street and disappear into the afternoon’s lengthening shadows.

#P#

SHE WON’T TELL ME HER NAME.

#P#

I can understand that well enough. Lots of kids on the streets of Lake try to keep their identities a secret, especially after participating in something illegal like a Skiz fight. Besides, I don’t want to know her name. I’m still upset about losing the bet. Kaede’s defeat cost me a thousand Notes. That was money toward a vial of cure. Time is running out, and it’s all this girl’s fault. Stupid me. If she hadn’t been responsible for getting Tess out of the ring, I would’ve left her to fend for herself.

#P#

But I know Tess would’ve given me sad puppy eyes for the rest of the day. So I didn’t.

#PAGE 19#

#P#