The memory is like a flint in me, lighting up the dark. A vicious growl rumbles in my throat, and I whirl on the guard, catching him hard in the jaw. I hit him once, twice—
—and then my strength gives way again, and I fall, dizzy from the exertion.
The guard stands over me. Several others rush to join him. I look back down to the ground and realize that I’m not sweating at all. There’s no water left in me.
That’s when I hear one of them say something above me that I swear I must have hallucinated.
“No,” one of the guards says to the others. “Let him go.”
“Hann’s order just came in. We’re to take him back up to the surface.”
I look up, thinking that maybe my weakness has left me too delirious to think straight. They’re letting me go.
I must be dreaming.
But then they’re taking me by the arms and dragging me up and throwing something dark across my eyes. I struggle with all the strength I have left. I’m misunderstanding what they’re saying, I tell myself. That’s the only way this makes sense. They’re not going to let me go. Hann has ordered them to kill me instead.
But I wait for the bullet through my head and it doesn’t happen. My feet drag against the floor. My consciousness is flickering in and out now. I can’t even tell when I’m awake and when I’m gone because, in this suffocating darkness, it’s all the same.
Eden. I have to find where they’re keeping him. My mind struggles to remember the path we’re taking.
I don’t know when they drag me into what seems to feel like an elevator. All I can do is try to remember how long we’re in it. Five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty.
My mind starts to fade. The guards’ voices above me are still talking, barking sharp orders at one another, but I can’t tell what they’re saying anymore.
I have to find my brother.
And then, suddenly they’re gone. The hands holding my arms vanish, and I crumple to the floor. It feels like asphalt, cement. The darkness lifts from over my eyes, and I suddenly see myself lying on the street somewhere in the Undercity, the smoke from nearby food stalls hazing the air.
AIS agents are here. They’re everywhere. The red dots of their guns are shining on me, and their shouts are deafening.
Hands in the air! Hands in the air! For an instant, I feel like a criminal again.
Then someone is shouting. “Stand down!” It’s the AIS director, Min. Her voice echoes against the concrete walls, forcing the guns to lower in a tidal wave. “Stand down! It’s Daniel. Stand down!”
Pushing through their ranks, too, is June. Her eyes lock on me and never steer away. I must be dreaming now. I lie where I am, the edges of my vision slowly fading into black, while she bends down beside me, her hands touching both sides of my face. Agents swarm around us.
“We’re here,” she’s saying. Then she raises her voice to those crowding around us, the authority in it returning. “Get back. Give him room. He’s injured!”
They listen to her instinctively, parting around us like a school of fish. I close my eyes, savoring her presence beside me. “They’ve got him,” I whisper through my parched lips. “Eden.”
June says something else. I think she’s ordering me to relax, that paramedics are going to take me to a hospital. I strain to understand what she’s saying, but her voice sounds muffled now. It’s still the loveliest voice I’ve ever heard. I want to stay awake to hear it.
And then everything is a blur of ambulance sirens and a chaos of other voices. June is nearby, holding my hand. Through it all, I keep looking back at where I’d come from. My thoughts blur together as I try to make sense of everything.
Hann ordered them to release me. They’d let me go. Why would he do that?
What does he want with Eden?
Where has he taken my brother?
EDEN
Dominic Hann keeps his promise to release Daniel.
I watch it numbly on a live feed in my view that night. My brother’s figure is undeniable—he’s tied down to a chair in some other part of this estate, struggling against his bonds. As I look on, he gets into a scuffle with the guards, and somehow—miraculously—breaks free. Shouts echo as he slithers out of a window with others on his tail.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that my brother used to be the master of avoiding the Republic’s soldiers. I’m dizzy with the speed at which he did it. How would he even know the route to get back up to the surface? But it doesn’t seem to matter. He keeps moving, even though he stumbles occasionally. I watch him go, my throat so dry that I gag.
He almost makes it on his own, even without Hann’s generosity. But then he stumbles. That’s when the guards approach him, and I think for a single, terrifying moment, that I’m going to witness them kill Daniel right there on the spot.
It will be what had happened to John, all over again.
But instead, I hear one of the guards say, “Let him go.”
He shakes his head and orders the others to pull Daniel to his feet. To my disbelief, they throw a bag over my brother’s head and start leading him away. They take him up an elevator, then leave him in the streets of the Undercity. The last thing the feed shows is the AIS finding him and swarming to him. Among them, I think I see June Iparis.
I don’t know what to make of the entire scene. I don’t know why Hann would agree to do such a thing.
Daniel’s free now. He’s going to come back for me, that I know with a dead certainty and a wild hope. He’s going to find where they’ve taken me and pull me back to the surface.
But if Hann succeeds in what he wants to do, I don’t know if any of that matters. I’ve now witnessed what his machine can do when powered with my engine. It’s one of the most spectacular and terrifying inventions I’ve ever seen.
Ross City is about to crumble.
DANIEL
I must have blacked out between the time June and the AIS found me and when I arrive at a hospital, because I don’t remember getting out of the ambulance. I don’t recall going up in an elevator or traveling down a hospital’s corridors.
All I know is that when I wake up next, I’m in my own bed, my window overlooking a blanket of clouds shrouding the glittering city. It’s nighttime now. The dizzy weakness I’d felt before is now gone, and I feel awake and alert, rehydrated, and as good as new.
When I look to my side, I see a girl asleep against the side of my bed, her head buried in her arms. Her dark hair spills behind her in a shining blanket.
It’s June.
She suddenly stirs, sensing that I’m awake. Her eyes dart first around the room, doing a quick sweep, probably sizing everything up in the way she always does to make sure we’re okay. Then her gaze settles on my face.
She lets out a long breath. “Hey,” she whispers, getting to her feet.
I give her a small smile. “Hey,” I reply.
She puts a cool hand against my forehead. “I don’t know how much longer we would have taken to get to you if you hadn’t sent that message. You looked pretty bad when we first found you.”
“They still have Eden,” I say. “Did you and AIS find anything about him?”