Because sometimes, broken pieces find a way to make a new whole.

DANIEL

When we finally return to our apartment in the dark hours of the morning, Eden showers and collapses into a deep sleep. He doesn’t stir again until the sun has already risen high in the sky. At least he doesn’t seem to be dreaming.

I spend most of the time awake, leaning against our balcony railing, watching the headlines and videos rotate on the city’s JumboTrons. News about what’s happening in Antarctica comes out in a steady stream. I watch the screens and see tanks roll through the Undercity, making their way down streets full of bonfires and angry people. There are police struggling to contain the chaos.

ROSS CITY IN FLAMES AS TROOPS, BROKEN VIRTUAL SYSTEM STRUGGLE

The President has called for an emergency meeting today in Batalla. But while all the politicians try to hash out a plan, time is ticking by. My lips tighten in frustration. The advantage that Hann has always had is the ability to ignore laws entirely. It was my advantage on the streets too. When you aren’t accountable to anything, you can move pretty goddy fast.

I look away, sick, as police surround a protester and swing their batons down at her body. The rest of the crowds raise their fists, cheering for Hann. He had wanted to make his point about the city’s corrupt system. He’s just willing to sacrifice all the people he claims to be fighting for in the process.

By the time my brother gets up, the sun has started to paint the sky gold.

I glance at him with a wry smile. “You look awful,” I say.

Eden lets out a single laugh as he limps over to join me. He’s holding his drone in one hand, its engine glowing with a faint blue light. “I don’t know how you climb all over the city like that without being completely useless the next day. My legs are killing me.”

I offer him a sip of my coffee. He takes it, cupping the hot mug between his hands, and we’re silent for a moment while the light turns steadily stronger. Eden tosses the drone in the air, and we watch as it hovers in place, steady and straight. Eden seems lost in thought, but I don’t push him. There’s a new ease in the quiet between us.

Finally, he straightens and nods out at the horizon, in the direction of Antarctica.

“I saw the news,” he says. “The Antarctican military has imposed martial law on Ross City.”

I shake my head. “No call signals are getting out of the city right now. It’s like no one knows how to function without the Level system in place.”

For us, who came from the humble streets of Lake, functioning on days when the power grid died was something we were used to dealing with. But a place like Ross City suddenly stripped of its technology?

Eden moves his fingers idly in the air, and his drone shifts to match his gesture, swerving right and then left. He frowns thoughtfully. “Hann said that his device would wipe the entire Level system clean,” he says. “But something about what Pressa said yesterday stuck with me. She mentioned that Hann might have taken down the entire system so that he could bring it back up again. Replace it with something to suit him.”

I nod. “But?”

He shakes his head. His fingers move again, and the drone obeys, flipping once in the air. “It’s stupid to dismantle the entire system only to rebuild it all over again. I don’t think he wiped it all clean. I think it’s just suppressed somehow, that he did something to disrupt the implementation of the system, but that it’s all still there somewhere. Intact. It’s much easier for him to work with something like that.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t dismantle my drone completely if I wanted to change it. I’d just revise it.”

I look on, marveling at the invention of his drone as it turns this way and that, its power source strong and stable. “Are you saying you might know how he did that?”

There’s a long pause, but when Eden finally nods, I note the light in his eyes. “I’m saying I can find a way to reverse it. He’s using the engine that I built to power it. If I can get back into his circle, I can find a way to shut the whole thing down and get the Level system back up.”

To prove his point, he waves his drone back into the balcony and lets it hover between us. Then he reaches for it, sliding his finger underneath the glowing engine. The engine gives a sudden, strange noise, and then it shuts abruptly down, clattering to the balcony floor.

I look back at my brother. The old fear rises in my chest, and images flash through my mind of him captured in the Undercity, his face pale and frightened. “But you’d need to be back in his good graces to do it,” I say, echoing his words. “You have to find him, yeah?”

He nods. “The machine needs a physical chip installed on it. I have to do it physically.”

The terror of not knowing where the Republic had taken him; the uncertainty of what was being done to him; the paranoia of ever letting him go again. It all rises back up in my chest. Eden can see it on my face, because he leans toward me and fixes his steady gaze on mine.

“You told me last night that I don’t ever have to go it alone,” he says. “Well, that goes for you too. I can do this, if you let me. But I’m going to need your help. June’s too.”

Everything in me wants to pull him back, tell him to stay here, stay safe. But I know he’s right. His silhouette is long and lanky now, no longer the small boy I once carried through a war-torn street. There are no guarantees that he’ll come out of this safely—that any of us will. But I also know, without a doubt, that he’s the only one who can do this.

At last, I nod. “What do you need from us?”

“A diversion. I need to convince Hann that I’ve decided to go rogue from what you and the others are planning to do, that I want in on his plans. Come back to Ross City with me. Find ways to slow him down. If you and June then go after his device with what little we do know, if you’re acting from the outside, then maybe I can convince Hann that I’m helping him keep it safe from you.”

It’s ridiculous. Too dangerous to play this kind of game with a mobster who has survived his entire life on tricks and double crosses. Hann is going to figure this out, and then my brother will be completely at his mercy.

But I still find myself nodding at him. “I’m in,” I say.

He blinks, and I realize that he’d been expecting me to push back. “Do we go to the President with this plan today? Do you think they’ll agree to this?”

I shrug. “There’s no way in hell any of them will—not in a meeting, anyway. But that doesn’t change anything we’re planning to do. We don’t have time to wait around watching them debate issues.”

He looks at me in confusion. “You mean you’re going to go behind the AIS’s back on this? On the government?”

His words bring a smile to my face. My brother—the rulebreaker who has made me panic more times than I can count—has never actually rebelled on the world stage. The old part of me, the wildling from the streets, the boy who’d spent his life running the city and dodging the Republic, stirs.

I shake my head. “I’m such a bad influence on you.”

At that, a grin creeps onto his lips too. “You mean, we’re just going to go?”