“And there you were,” my brother says, pacing in front of the couch where I sit. “Having a conversation with the deadliest murderer in Ross City like you two were goddy friends.”

“He just wanted to profit off my winnings,” I say, trying not to show my shaking hands. In my view, I can see messages from Pressa coming in, each more frantic than the last. Your brother was there! she’s exclaiming. Are you home? I’m back at my dad’s shop. Everything just went pitch-black! Are you all right? Eden?

Can’t talk right now, I quickly message her back. Tell you later.

“Right.” Daniel flashes me a look. He seems even more annoyed as he notices I’m messaging while he’s talking. “Because that’s all a notorious killer needs, a few extra corras in his pocket.”

“He liked the design of my drone, he offered to be my patron so that he could see it race, and he pocketed a bunch of money for my win. He never seemed interested in hurting me.” My voice turns urgent, as if I’m trying to convince myself too.

I try to picture Dominic as a ruthless killer. But his calmness still lingers in my mind, the way he understood me with a single observation, more than my brother does right now. The contrast between these two thoughts makes me shiver.

Daniel stops right in front of me and sighs. “Eden, I know you don’t know what it’s like to truly live on the streets. I’ve worked my entire life to make sure that never happens to you. I know you don’t understand a lot of what happened tonight, or what made it so dangerous. But—”

His tone makes me recoil. I know you don’t understand. Like I’m still ten years old. Like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I say.

He frowns at me. “Like what?”

My temper starts to boil over. “Like that,” I say again as I get to my feet. “This isn’t a conversation or a discussion. We’re not even having an argument. You’re lecturing me.”

“You were down in the Undercity again! In a drone race! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Then scream at me!” I insist. “Tell me how you can’t believe I did what I did tonight! Anything’s better than your pity!”

“I don’t pity you!” he yells. “My life would be a lot easier if you weren’t disappearing off to the dregs of this city every night!”

The Undercity is nothing but a pit of filth to him. When had he changed so much? “If the agency you work for wasn’t so tyrannical,” I yell back, “Pressa’s dad wouldn’t need to be a millionaire just to survive. We wouldn’t need to gamble on the races. And I wouldn’t have to explain myself to you as if I were talking to a damn stranger.”

Daniel just shakes his head. “You don’t get it,” he mutters. It’s all he resorts to, turning me back into the little brother.

But we aren’t brothers here. He’s my father, and I’m his son. The feeling of distance, along with the fear of everything that happened tonight, now threatens to smother me.

In disgust, I turn away. “When I leave for the Republic,” I say, “maybe it’d be best if you didn’t come with me. You should just stay here.”

Daniel winces, and I feel an urge to take it back. But instead I turn from him and head to my room.

Behind me, Daniel raises his voice. “Wait, Eden,” he calls out.

I pause as he hurries to my side. “Please,” he says, taking a deep breath.

“What?” I mutter.

He hesitates and his gaze hardens on mine. “Fine. Go to the Republic by yourself.”

He’s letting me go? I narrow my eyes at him. It surprises me how his comment cuts me. But my pride refuses to let me show that. “Fine,” I repeat.

Daniel winces again, as if he’d been hoping I’d say something different. But we each stay on our own side, no longer able to understand each other. It’s like I’m looking back at someone I haven’t known since I was a baby.

Then I turn away again. This time, Daniel doesn’t stop me as I head into my room and close the door between us.

 

* * *

 

“This won’t take long. You may feel a little buzz.”

Beside me, my brother folds his arms and turns his mouth down in a concerned scowl. “Go easy,” he replies to the woman. “He’s never used this system before.”

I grit my teeth at his familiar condescension and ignore him. I’m standing in the middle of a circular room at the top of the AIS headquarters with Daniel, a half-dozen other investigators, and the woman who had just spoken to me—Min Gheren, the AIS director herself. Glass windows stretch from floor to ceiling and curve around the chamber, giving us a stunning view of Ross City.

My eyes dart briefly to the endless plain of skyscrapers outside, each interconnected by webs of walkways. From up here, you can’t see the Undercity. It’s like it doesn’t exist at all.

I jerk back to the scene as one of the others in the room comes up to me and presses a thin metal bar against the back of my ear, where my chip is installed. “What are you doing?” I ask the director.

She fixes me with a piercing stare. “Mr. Wing,” she says to me, and Daniel shifts uncomfortably nearby, “it was right of your brother to inform AIS of the fact that you crossed paths with a man we’ve been struggling to track down for months. You need to understand that Dominic Hann never appears at gatherings like the one you attended last night. He does not need to show his face when his underlings can do the job for him. So imagine what it means that your performance so interested him that he decided to speak to you in person.”

The director pauses, then looks to her side at Daniel. She gives him a stern nod. “Tell him,” she says.

Daniel looks at me. His gaze is cool and calm this morning, like we didn’t have our argument the night before. “AIS has a system where we can replay and pull your memories up as a virtual scene,” he explains. “It’s all stored away on your chip. When we activate your system in here, it allows us to see the memory as you did, while trying to pick up on clues that you may not have noticed.”

I exchange a silent look with my brother. He doesn’t say more, but there’s a difference in the way he stares back at me. He’s not angry with me anymore; he’s afraid.

“Sounds like a plan,” I say.

The director gives us both a nod of approval. Then she waves a hand before her. A virtual screen hovers between us. From the way Daniel’s turned his head toward it, I can tell that it’s visible to everyone else in here too.

ALLOW MEMORY ACCESS TO LAST NIGHT?

 

I take a deep breath. “Granted,” I reply.

The screen disappears. A strange tingle starts at my temples, sweeps up to my head, and then all the way down my body. I shiver. The world around me takes on a blue tint. The chamber, the glass walls, the floor and ceiling—all of it fades away, leaving me and the others standing against a black backdrop. I sway, dizzy at the sight.

Then a scene rushes into place around us. It’s everything that happened the evening before, just as I remember it—I see myself walking through the tiny bar and stepping into the makeshift elevator. The rusted interior of the elevator shaft appears all around us, like a weird reenactment of the scene in which Daniel and AIS agents are also heading down with me. We stop at the bottom. Then we follow the memory version of myself out into the same hall, stopping ultimately out in the underground arena, where the countdown is on the wall and the drone race is setting up.