Day one thousand, two hundred and five starts like most of the others do: with knots in my back, a foreign ceiling over my head, and sweat-damp sheets rumpled on the bed. Bad-dream damp. Out the floor-to-ceiling window of my hotel room, the capital’s daytime life trundles on through a chilly midmorning. Snow flurries dance between the skyscrapers. Greenery on mid-level gardens billows in the cold wind, green leaves fluttering past to join the nascent snowflakes. Everything bright and shining, the sun’s reflection glaring at me through the glass.
From the bed, I roll over to face the window and the next row of highrises, but I’m not really looking at the view. My left arm lays stretched out over the empty half of the bed, thumb and forefinger rubbing together, absentmindedly longing for something that is not there there. The rounded nub of my right shoulder stays buried in the bed. Self-conscious even now. I blink slowly, lost in longing for a different view, a different bed, a ceiling whose every plank and knot I know. Someone for my fingers to touch. But there are no sounds of cooking coming from deeper in the house. No creaks on wooden floorboards, no buzzing cicadas or chirping songbirds. No comfort of knowing another person is near at hand. Just honking hovertransports and the quiet whirr of a climate control unit. And silence.
Eventually, I shake off the stupor and finally sit up, rubbing at my eyes to clear away the sleep. When they open again, the face of a stranger blinks back at me from the glass-plated closet. Long legs, too long for the hotel bed. Tan skin splattered in heavy brushstrokes of freckles. Those are mine. But the canvas-white hair, the downcast eyes, the silent lips; those belong to the girl whose name appears when I turn on my JOY. The mask I wear to survive.
How long has it been since someone called me by my real name? I can’t even remember.
My head comes to rest on the backboard. Knees instinctively half-tucked so my feet don’t hang off the bed. The sheet falls down while I finger my bad shoulder, feeling out the too-smooth nub, brain on autopilot. My eyes slide to the side table, the gunmetal-grey arm waiting there. Hate this part. The pinch of carbon fiber clutching to skin. The needles-stabbing as organic circuits drive into my nerves. But I hate being without it even more.
Once, there was a time I could go without my prosthetic arm if I really felt like it, and I often did. Those times ended one thousand, two hundred and five days ago. My world is a gladiocracy, fighting skill the only virtue. Being down a limb is a risk and a weakness I can no longer afford to indulge in. The arm is lightning-twitch fast, one-hundred percent nonmetallic, and the last link I have to finding Aunt Jolie. It was one of the last models she made for me, right around my sixteenth birthday. I’d broken the last while sparring with Thane. This one is as perfect as anything my aunt touches. I run my palm slowly over the bicep as I attach it, callused fingertips tracing the grooves. Reinforced plates stamped with the fishook logo of Shimano Heavy Industries, living biotech circuits painstakingly grown with my own genetic samples as their template; it’s one of those rare things that’s too expensive to have a price tag.
The segmented fingers curl in and out in every possible combination as I test the sync with my body. Only when I’m satisfied with the reaction time do I finally go get dressed; not that I have many options to choose from. I chucked everything I own into the cleanser bin by the door before I passed out last night. I nudge open the lid now and dump the bin across the floor, kicking through the meager pile. Do I want to wear those leggings, or these leggings? The socks with the holes, or the socks with more holes? You get the idea.
I’ve been on the move for a while, if you couldn’t guess. Figured out the rhythm of surviving alone. Learned how to keep my head down, keep away from attention, and just focus on getting through one day at a time. Which I did not do last night.
I broke every rule I’ve ever set for myself in the space of a few hours. Showed off too much while fighting? Check. Talked with someone for more than sixty seconds? Check. Made friends and enemies with people who are definitely going to remember me? Check, check, check.
My JOY is blinking the one-two pattern of an unread message when I finally make it to the bathroom. A fingertip tap on its shell opens a projection while I brush my teeth, fixing my hair up in a tail. The JOY runs a quick makeup scan over my face while my eyes scroll along the text. That girl from last night sent me a message about an hour after I slipped out of the club. I don’t even remember when I gave her my number. Scanning the contents real quick, a worried checkup that ends with a question mark and a :), I delete it and spit out my toothpaste, sighing into the sink.
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A stranger’s eyes, dour and electric blue, are waiting when I look up.
Whatever, Tets. New day, new city. You got this.
Five minutes later, I’m out on the concrete of the Imperial district, walking the long circuit of roadside paths that rounds one of the capital’s huge artificial lakes. Autobikes and hovertransports cruise along the wide asphalt highways beside me. Away from the skyscrapers, I’m left to the mercy of the coming winter. Cold air nips at my freckles. White hair flaps loosely over my shoulder. Shading my eyes with my left hand, I peer out over the placid lake, squinting at the landmarks dotting its shores. The beaches themselves are covered in picnicking couples, midmorning joggers, teams of university fighters out for training. The shallows writhe and roil from different classes at play. The Electric Town presses against the opposite shore nearly a mile away; the Metro Blockhouse towering over the rest of the skyline. A deeper chill snakes down my spine when I lay eyes on it again.
I focus on closer sights. On the east shore of the lake, the road splinters into a bouquet of highways as it enters some cluster of rich residential districts called the Glass. Closer at hand, my map points me towards the capital’s expansive community gardens and the Kingswalk, an acres-wide forest filled with shrines dedicated to the Section’s past champions- our rulers, the strongest warriors who stand over all others. Neither of those are the sort of places I’d expect to find Aunt Jolie. But then again, I’m not really sure where I would start looking. The capital’s a big place. And like me, Aunt Jolie vanished from the public eye nearly three years ago.
Unlike me, Aunt Jolie is- was- a major public figure; a face of the pro leagues. Though she wasn’t a warrior. She was a politician. And in a society where the only thing that really matters is how good you can fight, a politician who got famous in spite of that is a special kind of tenacious. The kind of tenacious that ends up on the news streams pretty regularly whether they want it or not. The kind of tenacious that doesn’t just disappear, or get disappeared.
But as far as I’ve searched, I’ve barely seen a clip about her on the streams or the Net in those three years. It’s like the entire world collectively decided to forget that she existed. And my own knowledge isn’t much better- Aunt Jolie is the only family I have left, but I never knew much about her life in the capital except that she worked in the Metro Blockhouse. And I can’t exactly walk up those famous steps, knock on a few office doors, and start asking around for her.
‘Seen anything about the mysteriously absent General Manager Jolie Mons?’ Hah. Not exactly a safe conversation opener when you’re trying to live as a ghost, believe me. It’s the kind of weird question that makes you memorable. And being memorable isn’t a great idea when people powerful enough to make someone like Aunt Jolie disappear tried to make me disappear, too.
Not to mention, most people that powerful are found in the Metro Blockhouse. It’s the throne of the Section. The forty strongest warriors in the land and the entire support staff they need to rule the capital and beyond call that place home.
I do my best to ignore the arena’s distant gaze while I walk the lakeside, asking about my aunt in the most innocent way possible. Everyone shrugs the same. No one recalls her being out in the city in months, if not years; though they all know her name. They say she’s a spectre of the M, now. Rarely seen, reclusive in the highest levels of the arena, only leaving on rare occasions. Or only being let to leave.
Couple hours later, I’m finished touring the entirety of the Kingswalk forest and no less aimless. I mull my options over while I eat a lunch of fried rice out on a lakeside hill, watching the families and couples from a distance. I pick through the bits of egg with a frown, flicking them onto the grass for a little blackbird that alights near my feet to peck at. The rice isn’t bad. Pretty good, actually. And that’s coming from someone who’s a bit of an expert. But it is rice. My stomach starts growling as my thoughts return to that burger from last night, that juicy meat with the cheese and the veggies and the… no, no, no, Tetsuka. I swallow the drool already pooling in my mouth, mind turning back to the burger, the club, Feint. Miss admin-track herself. That concerned message I deleted this morning. I’m not usually into trusting strangers, but Feint at least knew her way around the Electric Town. She might know a better person or place to ask some discrete questions. Better than picnickers, at least.
Frowning, I lean back onto the grass, pulling out my JOY. I page through a couple more projections till I’m staring at a list of all the landmarks where I could possibly find a clue to Aunt Jolie’s whereabouts. Besides the Kingswalk, there’s a couple more I might check, but only the last one has any real promise.
Only problem is, it’s right in the heart of hostile territory: the University district.