John. I still in Emerson’s grip. My heart freezes. Emerson senses my tension and knows he’s hit a nerve, because the edges of his lips tilt a little in grim satisfaction.

I’ve never seen the video of John’s death before. But I’ve read enough descriptions of it in the news to visualize it. It happened in a prison courtyard with high stone walls and a dirt floor smeared with dark stains. Republic soldiers dragged in a struggling figure and chained him in place against one of the walls. John’s execution, when he had taken Daniel’s place so that Daniel could escape.

I can’t breathe. The world around me—their laughter, the footsteps of hundreds of students—sounds muffled. I don’t say a word.

Emerson, Alan, and Jenna are all staring at me, daring me to look away from them. “Poor thing,” Jenna says, her voice dripping with just a little too much sympathy to be genuine. “Are you okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring him up.”

The Level system doesn’t penalize them for talking about my oldest brother. The tech still can’t tell the difference between a hard heart and a bleeding one.

John.

I am standing in front of my brother’s broken body, and I’m delirious on a gurney as the Republic drags me away, and I’m calling for my mother as a soldier lifts his rifle to her head. The anxiety crowds my mind and swells to the surface.

The way John would walk with me to school. The way he stayed up struggling to read by candlelight.

Emerson leans so close that his nose almost touches mine. “It’s okay, skyboy,” he says, just loud enough so that others can hear. He pats my shoulder. “Why don’t you let it out? You can cry—”

One second, his face is an inch from mine—the next, he’s on the ground, and my fist is smeared with blood from his broken nose.

The students around us scream, some in delight. Fight! The word ripples through the hall, and suddenly people are pressed in a tight circle around us. In my view, a red warning flickers, followed by:

INSTIGATING A FIGHT | −50 POINTS

I couldn’t care less. I swing down again. Emerson is so surprised by my attack that I manage to catch him on the chin again. Then his weight is overwhelming me, and he shoves me off hard enough to send me skidding across the ground. Still, he doesn’t attack. He doesn’t want the Level system catching him fighting back.

“Skyboy’s grown a pair, eh?” he says instead, his voice sharp. I struggle to my feet. My hands scrape raw against the ground. “Look at you, attacking someone unprovoked.”

I scramble to my feet and swing blindly for him again. Then people are prying us apart, and someone is shouting something in my ear.

“Hey! It’s okay. It’s okay.”

The voice belongs to Pressa. She’s still in her janitor uniform, and her hands are on my shoulders, shaking me. She looks up at the crowd around us. “What the hell are you all gawking at, anyway? Don’t you have places to go?”

The heat of the fight’s over, and the crowd’s already losing interest. As they scatter, Emerson dusts his shirt off and gives me a grim smile. So this is going to be how we part ways forever.

Pressa helps me to my feet. “Are you out of your mind, attacking someone like those guys on the last day of uni? You’re gonna get more point deductions, you know, if his parents file charges and the court agrees with them.”

But the memory of what had happened to John is burned too deeply into my thoughts for me to care. I swing my bag back over my shoulder and start stalking toward the exit again. “What does it matter, anyway?” I mutter. “If the system’s rigged from the start?”

Pressa doesn’t argue with that. She sighs and rests her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she says, her gaze distant. “Someday, we’re all gonna get out of here. Find adventure and happiness somewhere else.”

In gratitude, I touch her hand in return. At least there’s one person in my life who seems to understand, and of course she’s from the Undercity.

“You sure you still want to go to the drone race finals?” she says as we step out through the university’s double doors. “Maybe tonight’s not the best night for you to head down to the Undercity. Take some time and cool off, you know?”

But cooling off is the last thing I want to do. I’m always the one cooling off, shaking free. The thought of John’s execution plays over and over again. I have to go. I need to. If I don’t, my mind will burst.

“No,” I reply. “I’ll be there.”

DANIEL

My heart’s still hammering from my evening with June by the time I step out of the elevators and into the streets of the Undercity. My lips still burn from our kiss. A million thoughts run through my mind, and I find myself cursing silently at everything I did.

What a goddy idiot I am. Why didn’t I just tell her exactly how I felt? What kept stopping me in the moment? So what if she doesn’t feel the same way? Am I such a coward that I’d rather not know?

I sigh, indulging in my bad mood as I shove my hands in my pockets and hurry through the grungy streets. If I let myself, I could almost pretend that I’m back walking through Lake at night. Maybe nothing’s changed at all since June and I first got together all those years ago.

By the time I arrive on the scene in the darkest district of the Undercity, there must be at least half a dozen AIS drone vehicles blocking the intersection, their flashing lights painting the buildings in alternating washes of red and yellow, adding to the mess of colors from the neon signs hanging overhead. Jessan and Lara are already here, and when they spot me, they wave me over with grim faces. Some distance away, I see Min Gheren, the AIS director, talking in low voices with some of the police. She and I exchange a brief look of greeting.

“What took you so long?” Jessan asks me as I approach them. “You in the middle of a date or something?”

I glare at her as we walk. Yeah. Only my first kiss in ten years with a girl I’m crazy about. “Something like that,” I mutter back. “What happened here?”

“You’ll see,” Lara interjects from my other side.

The street is crowded with curious onlookers, and police and AIS agents alike keep telling people to get back behind the barricades. The pockmarked street is littered with broken glass, and burn marks against the sidewalks and the walls tell me there was some kind of explosion here. Already, the name hangs unspoken in the air—I can see it in the tense faces of my fellow agents, the way they’re taking extra precautions. This is Dominic Hann’s work.

Then we reach the crime scene, and I halt in my steps.

In the middle of the intersection lies a body laid out so purposefully that there’s no question this was intentional. It’s been sliced open. The face is unrecognizable. Beside me, Jessan and Lara look away from the vicious wounds that lace the corpse. I look on, my heart beating rapidly. An ugly flashback emerges from the dark corners of my mind now, the memory of bodies piled next to me as I woke up among them, terrified and in pain.

The memory is so vivid that I barely register Min coming over to stand beside us. Her lips are folded into a grim line as she studies the body with us.