“Daniel Altan Wing,” he says. “Well. I’m really going to cause a stir in the city this time.”

It’s Dominic Hann.

Eden. Where is he? But my senses are already starting to cloud over. My movements turn more labored. The lingering, relentless stench of chloroform triggers some old memory this time of the Republic’s labs, and I feel a sudden rush of panic—I’m ten years old and back at the Trials again, have failed again, and the soldiers are putting me under, cutting open my knee and injecting poisons into my eye, leaving me for dead. I am going to wake in a pile of corpses. The panic surges through me.

No. I’m not going back to that.

But I can’t fight out of this darkness. The world closes in around me.

In a last, desperate act, I bring up June’s account in my view. Then I message her. I don’t even get a chance to say anything—all I get to send her is an empty few seconds of static.

We aren’t what we used to be, but we know each other enough to sense when something’s gone wrong.

It’s all I have the strength to do. The last thing I see is the silhouette of Dominic Hann standing over me, giving a command to his men.

Then the darkness settles in, and I don’t remember anything more.

EDEN

 

Daniel’s not answering my call. Not only that, but the call doesn’t go through to his account at all—I just get an automatic message telling me to try again later.

I frown as I head away from the nightclub and back home after parting ways with Pressa. It’s a beautiful space, a walkway between two skyscrapers that’s been transformed into a lush green landscape, full of roses and willow trees and vines that crawl over the side of the walkway’s glass barriers to hang down to the floor below. Now in the middle of the night, it’s quiet, with only the occasional late partyer heading back home.

Maybe Daniel’s still out with June. It would be the only reason why he’s not returning my calls.

The only reason I want to think about, anyway.

The memory of the figures in the club is still fresh in my mind, along with Daniel’s worried eyes and ominous warnings. Here, in the upper echelons of the city, it’s hard to dwell on the fact that I’d just been in the Undercity days earlier, face-to-face with a notorious killer. It’s so serene here. All I can hear is the trickle of water from a central fountain on the walkway.

It’s nothing, I reassure myself. Daniel’s fine. There had been a warning this morning, anyway, about a solar flare that might knock out transmissions for the next few days. Maybe service is just bad right now.

Another automated message comes onto my view right as I reach the elevator station that will take me back up to my floor, telling me again that Daniel’s not available.

I pause, my eyes fixating on the glowing red outline of the hovering text box. It’s true that Daniel’s been on missions before that have required him to keep his system powered completely off … but he’s always given me warnings about that in advance. And after our meeting at AIS yesterday, the timing on this seems off.

A knot tightens in my stomach. I don’t know for sure, because an error message is hardly a reason to panic about something. But the knot is a familiar one. I remember it from childhood, from the nights when Daniel was still fighting his illness—of how I’d stir awake to see a blurry image of him hunched on the edge of his bed, his face pointed down at the floor and his lips tightened into a wince.

And even though a part of me keeps repeating Solar Flare Interference and AIS Business to myself, the knot still feels the same.

Something’s wrong. I know it without confirmation, without hearing Daniel saying it to me.

I bring the error message back up. “You better have a good reason for this,” I mutter at the message under my breath. With a sigh, I try to shake off my growing sense of unease.

The elevator station is empty tonight, and for the first time in a while, I’m the only one heading up fifteen stories to my floor. The music playing in the lobby echoes against the empty floor. I swallow, the knot in my stomach twisting into something painful.

It’s going to be okay, I tell myself as the door finally slides open and I step in. My thoughts whirl as the elevator rises silently. Daniel’s going to be at home, and he’s going to be wearing that annoyed expression he always gets as he asks me why his messages weren’t getting through to me.

Then, abruptly, the elevator stops ten floors shy of mine—and a man and a woman in suits step inside.

I stiffen immediately. Both of them are looking at me.

“Do you need something?” I ask.

The woman gives me a terse smile. “You’re Eden Bataar Wing, yes?” she asks.

I realize I don’t have my name displayed over my head right now. “How do you know?” I reply.

The man gives me a nod so courteous that it seems mocking. “A pleasure,” he says. “My employer, Mr. Hann, would very much like to extend a cordial invitation to you for a meeting with him tonight.”

Mr. Hann. Dominic.

The name hits me like a hammer, and the wind is knocked out of me so hard that for a moment I can’t respond to him. The knot pulls tighter. Something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong.

“I—” I start, then stutter to a halt from the dryness in my throat. “I can’t make it tonight,” I try again.

The woman smiles at me and puts a hand on my shoulder. It feels ice-cold. “Mr. Hann would very much like to make it worth your while,” she replies.

I’m trembling now. Through the elevator’s glass windows, the walkway to my university disappears far below me. I shake my head, wishing I could come up with a clever reply. “I’m sorry,” I say instead. “I have some homework to finish up, and I need to work on an engine—”

The man doesn’t wait for me to finish repeating my pitiful lie. He waves a hand subtly in the air, and suddenly a video screen appears between us.

It’s a feed of someone following Daniel as he leaves a hotel room. June’s, most likely. The video trails him down through the Sky Floors as he takes the elevators, his hands casually in his pockets, his silhouette familiar. There’s a small, lingering smile on his face. He has no idea someone is watching him.

Every hair rises on my neck at the sight.

Daniel steps inside our apartment. The alarm system doesn’t greet him in its usual way. The door starts to slide shut behind him, but the video feed follows him in. Whoever it was that was trailing him got into our apartment.

The feed cuts off.

As if on cue, I get an incoming call from June that appears in my view. When I don’t answer, her voice starts playing automatically. “Eden,” she says. “This is June Iparis. I just received a blank transmission from Daniel, and I can’t seem to call him back. Is he with you? Where are you? Eden?”

The knot in my stomach turns to stone. The world around me hazes at the edges. The echo of Something is wrong fills my mind until I can hear nothing but its shrieks. All this time, my brother had been the one worrying about me, and I’d been stupid enough to believe that that meant he was invincible. All this time, I’d never thought about what might happen if things were the other way around.

“Mr. Hann would like to insist on seeing you tonight,” the man says to me now. “You’ll be very pleased to know that your brother will also be in attendance.”