The would-be thieves don’t wait around.
I see their eyes dart to me—not even to my face, but to the telltale black suit I’m wearing—and instantly, fear washes over them. They know exactly who I work for.
“Let him go,” one of the thieves snaps to the other.
The man holding Eden’s collar releases him, then sheathes the knife he was carrying. The two of them start sprinting down the alley. One of them chances a glance back at me, then shudders and speeds up.
For a second, I think about chasing them down. Jessan and Lara are still here—I could call them and tell them to track those two men with the Level system’s geolocator and have them arrested the instant they’re cornered.
But I’ve already had a woman die in my arms today. My strength for dealing with the Undercity’s crimes is pretty exhausted.
Instead, I turn my glare down at my little brother. My smile feels like a line drawn in stone against my face. “Well,” I call down at him as I shift my footing against the balcony. “You told me you were going to stay late at the university, yeah? Fancy running into you down here instead.”
Eden doesn’t look relieved that I’ve saved his ass. He shoots an irritated glance up at me and crosses his arms over his chest. “You followed me?” he says incredulously.
I’m not about to tell him that I tracked his location. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I reply. “I had real work to do down here.”
Even though he’s a lanky young man now, his wavy blond curls darker than they used to be, his eyes slender and pale, his glasses perched against the same kind of angular nose that I have—all I can see is the version of him that’s still a small boy. The boy I once thought I’d lost to the Republic. The boy who had stumbled out of a hospital room, blind, calling my name. The boy who had sat with me on a cool tile floor and
held my hand as I fought through an illness that almost killed me.
The boy I’d bled to protect.
He doesn’t say a word as he pushes away from the wall. I pull my shades back over my eyes, swing down to the first floor, and fall into step beside him.
“Are you going to tell me anything? Or do I have to start?” I say to him.
He doesn’t even look at me. “Why? Are you going to tell me what job brought you down here?”
I shake my head. “You know I can’t talk about what I’m doing.” “Then I guess I don’t have much to say.”
I sigh as we fall into an uncomfortable silence. When we’d first moved to Ross City from the Republic, Eden had still been small, and he’d been happy to follow me everywhere I went. But over the past few years, our conversations have turned into this, in which neither one of us really knows what to say to the other.
“Have it your way,” I say, at last, as we cut through the main food market. People make a wide berth for us when they see my black suit. “What were you doing down here?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” I repeat, shooting him a sidelong glance. “I mean, that’s why people come to the Undercity, of course. To do nothing.”
Eden glares at me. “Are you extra sarcastic today because you haven’t been on a date in a few days? Have you finally seen every girl in the city?”
“I’m being serious here.”
His expression darkens. He looks away from me and picks up his pace. I try to ignore the whispers that follow us.
Look at his suit. It’s the AIS. Don’t stare.
“You were here to see that girl, yeah?” I say, after another long silence. “What was her name? Pressa?” We’ve left behind the worst part of the Undercity, and up ahead, I can see the station with the elevators leading back up to the Sky Floors.
Eden shrugs, but I can tell from his reaction that I’m right.
“Her father’s running an illegal apothecary, you know,” I go on. “I’ve actually told the AIS not to intervene because it would shake up their
community too much. But—”
At that, Eden’s eyes flash at me. “Is that a threat? Are you trying to tell me to stay away from her because she’s a dangerous influence? Are you using her against me or something?”
“No, I’m trying to warn you so that you and your friend don’t end up crossing the AIS. I only have so much influence in the agency.”
“Thanks. But I don’t need your help with Pressa. Isn’t June coming to town tomorrow? Why don’t you worry about that instead?”
His casual mention of June stings, and he knows it. June—the person who changed my entire life, the one who lingers so strongly in my mind that I can’t bring myself to stay in a relationship with any other girl for longer than six months—will be in Ross City tomorrow, accompanying the Elector Primo as he visits us to discuss a trade deal between the Republic and Antarctica.
Suddenly, I’m very aware of the paper clip ring around my finger.
I try not to let him see how vulnerable her name makes me feel, and I shift the topic back to him. “I’m not mad at you,” I say in a level voice. “You know that, right?”
I look for a reaction on his face, but all I get from him is more stony silence. We reach the elevator station. As we walk under its entryway, a pleasant ding sounds, the indication that our Levels—me, Level 87; Eden, Level 54—are high enough to allow us to use this transit station. Behind us, a man at Level 26 tries to sneak in behind us. An alarm beeps, and he’s stopped by an invisible force field.
I halt in front of a private elevator made specifically for AIS agents to use. It approves my account, and I scan Eden in as my guest.
Finally, as we step into the elevator and it seals us inside its cool, glass interiors, I turn to face my brother.
“You gotta give me something here, Eden,” I say. “Or do you seriously not trust me with anything anymore?”
Eden studies me. “Why aren’t you mad at me?” he asks. I blink. “What?”
“Why aren’t you mad at me?” he says again. There’s an edge to his voice. “You caught me wandering around the Undercity, the most dangerous place in Antarctica. I lied to you. And now I’m not talking to you. You should be furious.”
“You want me to be angry with you?” I narrow my eyes at him. “What good does that do?”
“It would be something,” he snaps. “An emotion, at least.”
I take a deep breath. “Listen, I know it’s been rough. You don’t talk to me about what’s happening at the university, so I don’t know what it’s like—but I’ve been able to read you since you were a baby. You’ve seen happier days.”
“I’m fine,” he replies, in a way that tells me he’s obviously not. “And I’d be a lot happier if you didn’t chaperone me all the time.”
“I don’t chaperone you all the time.”
“You tried to call me nineteen times in one hour. Was that just for casual chitchat?”
“All you have to do is answer the phone once, you know.” “It’s not your business where I go during the day.” “Everything you do is my business. I’m in charge of you.” “You indulge in your life. Let me indulge in mine.”
“Is that why you come down here? To pretend you’re something you’re not?”
“That’s what you think?” Eden asks. “I go to the Undercity to play at being poor?”
“I’m saying I hate it when you put yourself in danger when you don’t ever have to.”
“Maybe our definitions of danger are different.”
“Excuse me if I thought you looked like you needed some help back there.”
Eden’s gaze pierces me. “You tracked me with the geolocator, didn’t you?”
I hesitate for just a fraction of a second, but it’s long enough to give him the answer. He makes a disgusted sound and turns away. “I thought I disabled it,” he mutters.
I swallow my rising annoyance. Disabling a geolocator should be impossible, so of course Eden was figuring out some way to hack it.
“The city’ll fine you for that if they find out,” I tell him. “How many times are you gonna make me cover for you?”
“Like you’ve always been a law-abiding citizen.”
Behind his glasses, Eden’s irises have their faint purple tint in the light, the color that never entirely faded since he recovered from the plague. It’s my constant reminder of what it was like to almost lose him, what it could be like again if I’m not careful.
“I used to break the law because I had to,” I say coldly. “What are you
breaking it for?”
Eden turns to face me fully. “You want to know the real reason I was in the Undercity today?” he says. “Because it reminds me of Lake. When I walk down there, I’m home. All that smoke and grease and grime, the rags and barred windows … I feel safer down there than I do anywhere else in this city. When I’m there, I think of John and Mom.”
I can tell there’s more he’s not telling me, but my temper sharpens at his mention of our mother and brother. “How about you don’t bring them into this?”
But Eden doesn’t stop. “Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten where you come from. When you’re in the Undercity, it’s like you can’t wait to leave it behind.”
He has no idea how wrong he is. How often I used to do exactly what he’s been doing. I try to remind myself that Eden never saw the way I used to wander aimlessly down the streets of Lake. Back when I’d first been accepted into the Republic’s inner circles, when I was working with June but still felt like an outsider at all the Republic’s goddy balls and banquets … I’d walk the quiet streets of my old neighborhood and take in the rust and the grime. The humble homes and dirty coasts.
But Eden doesn’t remember that. He was too young. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to crawl your way out of that kind of life, to want to keep your younger brother from ever having to see what you’ve seen, endure what you’ve endured. I took him here to get him away from Lake. But he keeps ending up down there anyway.
And I get it. The corner of my heart that’s still Day, the boy from the streets, begs me to explain that to him.
Instead, I say, “It’s because I don’t ever want to walk those streets again. That’s our past, not our future. We didn’t move all the way here just to go back to that. And yet you’re in the Undercity every other week.”
Eden crosses his arms over his chest. “I can’t spend an hour away from home before you ask where I am. I can’t stay out a second past midnight before you come searching for me. Soon I’ll be working for the Republic. Remember? I have a life that’s completely separate from yours.”
“Forgive me if our past has made me a little paranoid about your safety.”
“Daniel.” For an instant, Eden’s voice softens. “I know. Believe me.
But it’s not up to you to watch my back every second of my life. You can’t always know where I am. I’m not twelve years old anymore.”
“Well, to me, you’ll always be twelve.”
Eden flinches as if I’ve hit him. I suddenly notice that he’s been arguing eye to eye with me. When did Eden get so tall? Has it really taken me this long to notice? Then the initial sting leaves his expression. He looks away from me and out through the glass, back down at the Undercity far below us.
The elevator finally reaches our floor. Eden steps out first and doesn’t look back. “No need to follow me,” he calls over his shoulder. “I know the way home. Or did you want to supervise me through the front door?”
And before I can protest, he’s left without me, his figure fading down the hall.
