“I found your clever little drone,” Hann says softly to me. “Or were you going to tell me at some point?”

I step slowly around the circle, my attention still partly fixated on the nodes. Every single one is a marker of how you level up—at least, in Hann’s new world.

“What’s the point of doing this?” I say suddenly. “Corrupting it all, destroying the Level system, and then replacing it with your own? What about everything you said against the city, that you didn’t believe in people being treated like this? Now you’re just going to do the same thing?”

Hann smiles. “Sometimes it isn’t the idea that’s corrupt, but the one operating it,” he replies. “Would you want the entire Level system deleted? You’ve seen what kind of chaos can reign in the streets without it.”

It’s almost as if he knows about the chip I planned to install into the Level system too. I hate him for the gray zone that he keeps challenging me to think in.

“Think about how many people in this city must be terrified right now, without the Level system in place,” he continues. “The Undercity’s civilians have suffered, been suppressed, and been beaten back into line by the city. Now imagine that I replace this city’s government. I return the Level system to its place—only now, it runs how I desire. The Sky Floor citizens lose their power. I hand it to the Undercity’s population. People hate chaos, you know. If you hand them back control over their lives, they will fall to their knees before you and shower you with gratitude.”

I scowl at him. “So you want the people to look up to you instead as their savior, after they’ve suffered through the chaos that you inflicted in the first place.”

Hann nods. For a second, the fatherly side of him returns, and his gaze softens. “My son, Erick, was as sharp as you are,” he says, shaking his head. “I wish you could have met him. He was such an intelligent boy, so full of potential. He was as promising as you.”

Even though I’m standing here as his captive and enemy, I can tell that when he looks at me, there’s someone else he imagines in my place.

Then the moment’s gone, and his eyes harden again. “You think I let you back in here without suspecting anything?” he says. “That you suddenly had a change of heart, that you really chose to turn your back on your brother?” He shakes his head, looking almost sad. “You really think I believed that you wanted to cure my condition?”

Pressa scowls at him. “That medication was real,” she interrupts.

“Oh, I know.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “And I appreciate your administration of it. You’ll have to forgive me for emptying the contents of my stomach afterward, though. I’ve heard those herbs will cause terrible fevers. Or were you already aware of that?”

Pressa’s jaw tightens. She opens her mouth to say something back at him—but before she can, Dominic Hann has a gun in his hand, the shiny barrel pointed in her direction.

I move toward Pressa, but he’s too fast.

He fires straight at her.

DANIEL

“Daniel—wait!”

I can barely hear June calling to me as I hurry out of the building’s waiting rooms and out into the main control area, yanking my jacket on as I go. The air outside is crisp and cold, and the simulated night is heavy, broken by a smattering of screens playing advertisements.

“Day.”

It’s only the sound of my street name that makes me pause long enough to turn around. June catches up to me, her hair bobbing in the wind, and grabs my arm with one hand.

“You’re not going down there alone,” she says firmly.

“I have to.”

“We have no idea why Eden didn’t send his message. He could just be late for some reason, or trying to fix his device. There are a dozen possibilities. If you just go down there now, you could be blowing his cover.”

“And what if he’s in trouble?”

“Then Hann will let you know soon, without a doubt.” June crosses her arms. “You think he won’t pass up an opportunity to use Eden against you, if he figured out this whole plan?”

I hold up both hands. “That all makes sense—I get it. But if he’s preparing to use Eden against me, then we’re already too late. He’s not going to let Eden go again. And if he knows that we’re aware of what he’s doing, that we’re coming for him, he’ll be ready for us.” I shake my head. “I can’t just sit around here and wait.”

June sighs and looks away for a second. Her eyes flash in frustration. I’m reminded suddenly of the way we used to argue when the Republic was in the thick of its war, and a part of my heart twists in guilt. “You know me, yeah?” I say, taking a step closer and leaning down toward her. “You know I can do this. I’ve been at it my whole life. Let me go alone. It’ll be easier for me to hide if I’m on my own. Stay up here and watch my back. Keep track of my location. And if you see us on our way out, tell the AIS to be ready for us.”

She turns to me now. The frustration on her face has given way to fear, and within that fear, I see the same worry I have every time she risks her life.

“Then hurry up,” she finally says, leaning toward me. Her voice is soft and steady. “We’ll be ready for you. I promise.”

I think of the night we shared, all our moments of awkwardness, the slow dance of getting to know each other again. The potential of a lifetime with June. If there’s any reason to make it back up to the surface, it’s for that—and I’ll be damned if Dominic Hann takes that chance away from me. I have lived through revolutions and war, massacres and illness. I’m going to survive this too, and so will my brother.

I bend toward her. My lips gently touch hers, and for a moment in time, we stay locked together. Then I pull away. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I say.

* * *

The cool night air bites at my cheeks. The tracker June put on me, a patch of metal at the middle of my back, feels cold against my skin. There’s a cap pulled down securely over my eyes, and a black half-mask covering the bottom of my face. As I head deeper into the quiet outskirts of Ross City, the familiar sense of being alone on the streets comes back to me. There’s something oddly comforting about it. I pull my cap lower on my head, then pick up my pace and dart through the shadows.

With the city’s system offline, I can’t bring up a map before me like I usually could. All I’m relying on is the memory of the location that June showed me on a map back at central control, the last location we’d received from Eden when he went down with Hann’s men. I won’t have anyone guiding me to where they happen to be. I’ll have to find my own way there.

Finally, I stop at an intersection nearest to where I remember the location dot was. This street corner looks abandoned, but Hann’s guards could be hiding in some building, watching for anything suspicious.

I pause in the shadows of one of the buildings, pull myself up to the second-f loor ledge, and then take out a small metal sphere from my pocket. The AIS has a number of weapons that remind me of the Republic’s. This one is like a homemade smoke bomb, what I used to make back in Lake—except it’s much stronger, and the smoke spreads over a wider area.