I toss restlessly in a series of nightmares. My mother, getting shot over and over again. Me, locked in a glass cylinder in a forever-rocking train car, weeping and waiting for someone to let me out. The blurry haze that blankets my vision after the plague finishes with me. The man named Dominic steps out of that haze to talk to me. Drones zip by overhead as I run down strange streets, searching for a family that isn’t there. It all swirls together into one long, endless dream.
I wake in a panic, as I always do. I spend the rest of the night pacing in my room, scribbling down more engine ideas to distract myself, until the first light of dawn appears.
Then I head off to the university before Daniel’s even awake.
The final day of exams passes before me in a blur. I finish my tests early, even though I’m exhausted, and hurry out into the school’s halls as fast as I can in an attempt to avoid talking to anyone.
The halls are still pretty quiet, but some of the other classes have already let out, and a steady stream of students are making their way down the halls and out of the university. I walk down the path alone. My shoes echo against the tiles. Simulated afternoon light from outside the city’s biodome is streaming into the halls, painting everything in gold.
A few loud voices drift to me from somewhere up ahead. I stiffen, slow my walk, and listen more closely.
Damn. Emerson and his crew.
He’s laughing his head off at something that Jenna has said, and from the sound of it, they’re hanging out at the end of the hall, blocking the entrance of the university.
I stop in the middle of the sunbathed hall and try to figure out another way to leave the campus. On a normal afternoon, there would be two other entrances and exits in this building. But because of today’s finals, I know the back entrance is already locked. I think about trying the side entrance to see if
it’s open, but it doesn’t connect to the elevators that lead back down to my floor. I’d have to take a long, meandering route down to the Mid Floors in order to get back home.
Maybe I’ll be lucky today. It’s the last day, and he must be in a good mood, too busy celebrating with his friends to notice me slipping out of the university.
I hesitate there for a moment too long. In that instant, I hear his voice suddenly turn in my direction, followed by a shout that echoes down the hall. “Well!” he shouts. “Looks like the Wing boy’s out early, as always!”
My palms break out in a cold sweat. Emerson chuckles, the same sound I always hear whenever he’s thought up some new way to mess with me. I curse under my breath, then whirl around and start walking toward the side entrance.
But I can hear him catching up, along with the laughter of his friends. My eyes dart to the timer floating in the corner of my virtual view. Other students won’t get out for another fifteen minutes.
I’m only halfway down the hall before an arm grabs the back of my shirt and forces me to turn around.
Emerson’s cheery brown eyes are staring straight at me. He grins. “What are you in such a hurry for, Wing?” he says.
My eyes dart to the two behind him. Jenna and Alan smile back at me.
It’s the last day you’ll ever have to deal with them, I tell myself over and over again. Just get through this.
So I shrug out of his grasp and mutter, “I’m late to meet up with my brother.”
Alan grunts in surprise. “I thought you and your brother weren’t talking much these days,” he says.
“Doesn’t he have another brother?” Jenna pipes up.
Emerson’s face lights up. “He did! But I think he died in front of a firing squad.” He shakes his head at me in mock sympathy. “I remember seeing the leaked video of that online.”
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.”
