Still others are furious, delighted to unleash their anger by attacking their neighbors with the kind of violence that’d normally get your Levels flattened. There are some taking advantage of the system’s disappearance to break into shops and stock up on all the things they’ve never been able to buy. We pass several young people who are simply wrecking the street for no reason, crushing scooters and boards and auto-buses and spraying them with buckets of paint. In the night, their figures cast long shadows against the wall.
“Things are deteriorating quickly,” June calls to us as we run. “Eden, we won’t have long before this situation makes it unreasonable for us to stay down here. Can we get to your friend before that?”
Pressa. Her name rings through me over and over. Her father’s apothecary is deep in the heart of the Undercity, right in the thick of everything. “We’ll reach her,” I call back as we hit an intersection and make a sharp turn. “We have to.”
A flipped auto-car in the street stops us dead in our tracks. People have already crowded around it so tightly that there’s no easy way around it. Nearby, flames burn gold against the night.
I spit out a curse. “We can’t get through,” I say.
Daniel looks overhead and nods for me to follow. “There’s a way,” he replies. He reaches the end of the street and then darts into a narrow alley between two blocks. His movements are steady and sure, like he’s been down these roads a dozen times before.
We hit a dead end stopped by a locked gate. But Daniel doesn’t stop moving. He kicks off against the wall and shimmies up to the second floor in a matter of seconds, then leaps off the ledge to climb onto the top of the gate. He drops out of sight. June runs up to the gate right as Daniel emerges from the other side of it, opening the gate from the inside.
“Hurry,” he gasps as he ushers us through. We dart down a private walkway before emerging back out into the streets.
Two blocks down, I see it. The apothecary.
There’s a mob of people that have surrounded the shop, and the front window is already smashed. Standing in the entrance is Pressa’s father, his frail body gamely pressed in the doorway as he pleads with the people to keep order. Beside him, Pressa and her father’s assistant, Marren, are shoving back anyone who gets too aggressive.
“Get away!” she shouts. “Get back in the street! You can’t come in here!”
There are others trying to help them, too. I recognize a few of the store’s frequent customers. Several of the larger men have formed a human barricade on one side of the shop, while two others are boarding up the broken window on the other side.
My heart lifts a little at the sight, even though the situation looks like it’s about to tip over into something dangerous.
“Pressa!” I shout at the top of my lungs as we approach. My hands wave high in the air.
Her head whips around in my direction, and her dark eyes search the crowd for me. They finally settle on where we are.
“Eden?” she says incredulously. Her entire demeanor brightens at the sight of me.
I don’t hesitate. I just start pushing through the crowd to reach where she’s standing with her dad. She grabs my arm in a viselike grip. Her eyes are wide and frantic.
“Everything’s falling apart,” she tells me in a rush. “People are trying to steal our medicine.”
Behind me, Daniel and June have pushed their way up to the top of the steps too. When one man trying to get into the shop suddenly shoves Pressa’s dad, June whips out an elbow so fast that she breaks the man’s nose before he can even react. He cries out in pain and shrinks back.
June narrows her eyes at him and raises her voice at the crowd. “Police!” she shouts. “Get back, now!”
The authority in her voice is so militaristic that, at least for the moment, everyone listens. Beside her, Daniel shoves two people away from the entrance.
I turn back to Pressa. “You and your dad have to get out of here,” I say. “Leave the shop. Dominic Hann destroyed the Level system—it’s not coming back up anytime soon. This situation’s going to boil over.”
Pressa looks desperately to where her father is standing guard at the entrance. “There’s no way in hell we’re leaving,” she replies. “I can’t just let him stay behind, and he’s not going to give up on his entire life’s work.”
I grit my teeth and start pulling her with me. “Do you get how dangerous this is?” I urge her. “I’m talking about your lives here!”
She yanks herself out of my grip. Her eyes flash with anger and fear. “You think I’m stupid?” she snaps. “This is everything we have, Eden! Everything!”
“It’s a shop, Pressa—not your lives!”
“This shop is something that Dad has built all his life. It’s all that keeps us from being homeless. He’s not going to run, so I’m not going to leave his side.” She gives me a bitter glare. “Not that I expect a skyboy like you to understand.”
I release her arm, and she goes hurrying back to her father. Mr. Yu’s now pleading with the people who are trying to shove their way past him.
“Please!” he calls out. “I’ve known many of you for years!”
But the hunger and chaos is building to a breaking point. I see two men suddenly crash through one of the side windows. They stumble into the shop, then start dumping any and every herb and canister they can find into a bag. Others start stepping in.
I curse at the sight. Daniel’s struggling to keep the tide of people from entering through the broken side window, while June stands determined at the front entrance. I shove back a woman clawing her way through another open window.
Pressa shields her father, and together with Marren, they pull him back. Her father’s sobbing now—rivulets run down his face as he tries in vain to tell people to stop taking his medicines. “Please!” he calls over and over again, grabbing a passing sleeve and arm and pant leg whenever he can. “Stop! Please!”
This is going to go wrong. The thought amplifies until it becomes a scream in my head. My heartbeat speeds up until I think it’s going to explode. It’s the feeling of being tied down in a gurney in the seconds right before a soldier shoots my mother.
This is going to go very, very wrong.
I see it happen in slow motion.
A young, bone-thin man with hollow cheeks makes a beeline toward the shop’s entrance, trying to pass underneath Mr. Yu’s outstretched arms. He stumbles in his rush, falls, and hits his face hard against the edge of the doorframe. It cuts a deep gash across his cheeks.
Mr. Yu turns to him. I see a flash of worry cross his eyes—and instead of shoving the young man back out of the store, he bends down to help him.
“Steady,” Mr. Yu says to the young man on the ground as he clutches his face and moans. “That’s a nasty gash. I’ll help you bandage it—”
But the young man whirls on Mr. Yu in a blind fury. Pressa sees the glint in the air at the same time I do. She screams and grabs her father to yank him away, even as he holds the bandages in his hand. I open my mouth and lunge in their direction.
Neither of us reaches him in time. The young man’s knife plunges deep into her father’s stomach. Once. Twice.