It takes some time before I finally realize why I feel so off when I wake. It’s not the plethora of injuries that maul me- I’ve dealt with plenty of those in my time, and I’m sure I’ll deal with plenty more before I die. It’s not my arm- I put that back on as soon as I rolled off Cal’s couch. It’s not her apartment, either. It’s not this city. In fact, it’s no new feeling at all that’s got me on edge. It’s one that’s missing.

When I wake, I am not drenched in sweat. My spine is dry. Skin cool. No panicked overheat, no trembles from nightmares I don’t remember.

I slept straight through the night. No dreams, no night terrors. Not that it’s done much good for my physical exhaustion, but waking up after dead sleep like that is a luxury I haven’t had in years. And there’s something weirdly calming about the domestic normality of listening to Cal bustling around in her kitchen while I lie there with my eyes closed. Clanking ceramic, boiling water, caf pouring. The beep-beep-beep of a food prep unit. A chair scraping back at the table. Calm morning music with a consistent beat that drifts from hidden speakers in the floors.

Even this normalcy has its edge, though. I can feel Cal’s attention on me the moment my breathing rhythm changes, the needle-prick feeling of her eyes on my bare back as I sit up and shirk a borrowed blanket from my shoulders. Don’t even remember when that one got there; I didn’t have it when I crashed on the couch. She goes back to sipping her caf and scrolling through the news while I head into the washroom to clean off my face and reapply a fresh layer of nanospray.

“Your peasant rags are in the washer,” Cal calls from the kitchen. “Shirt’s on the bed for you.”

Blinking through dripping eyelids, I slowly twist to one side, eyeing the nanospray’s work along my flank. It’s the real deal. Still will take days to heal to a usable level, and I’m sore in every bone, but it’s a good sign. That black ki still hasn’t come back out. And I look more awake, too. Less gaunt.

I immediately scowl when I see the shirt waiting on the bed. It’s far too big for either Cal or I. Another of her brother’s. I throw a dirty look at the kitchen and sit down beside the shirt, holding it in my prosthetic hand while I run my real fingers along the chewed-up collar. Feeling the frayed edges of the softened fabric. I doubt he keeps shirts like these anymore; he stopped as we got older. They weren’t exactly fitting for a student of Mars Mons, Sectional Champion. Even less for the ever-televised disciple of Gami, then-rising threat of the major league. Still. I kept a couple of them around the house for myself. And he still wore them, when no one else was there to see.

I lift this one up to my nose, breathing deep. Wondering. But it just smells like detergent.

“I thought you village types slept on the floor,” Cal says when I pad back out. “I half expected to find you curled up beside the door.”

“We do sleep on the floor,” I mutter, still pawing the sleep from my eyes.

“Let me guess- because it builds character?”

“Because it makes sure we don’t grow up to be murderers.”

She sniffs out a laugh. “You and Thane really do have a lot in common. Dry humor, bleak personality, quiet as a rock if I didn’t keep nudging you.”

“We lived more of our childhood together than apart,” I snort. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“He never shared much about you. I never got why. Still don’t. You’re… well, you’re a character.”

“He’s not the type to share things unprompted. If you’d ever asked, he would have told you.” My eyes flicker. “Some of it, at least.”

“You say that with as much confidence as you did calling him an accessory to regicide,” Cal says, glancing back now. “And what exactly are you doing in my pantry?”

“Looking for jerky.” I close the cabinet and open her cooler instead, surfing the sparse contents. There. Clear box, steak and mushroom-something-sauce slathered on top. “Never mind. Found it.”

Cal’s chair scoots against the floor as she tries to peer past me. “I don’t even have jerky. What are you…” Silence for a moment as she peers closer at what I’m tossing in the food prepper. “No, nononono. That’s an A5 cut! That steak costs more than you would on market! Don’t you dare just throw it in the prepper like a-”

I push the key and go start filling a glass of water.

“And washing it down with tap water. Oh my god.” Cal drapes a hand over her face and goes back to eating her food. “You’re an animal.”

For her benefit, I eat the steak with just a knife, sawing off chunks and popping them in my mouth. Chewing noisily, playing a game of chicken with Cal’s patience while she goes to make another cup of caf. Her eyes linger on the movements of my prosthetic hand as she passes.

“When did that one happen?” she asks a minute later, busy at the sink. “Must be an old wound. There’s no scar tissue.”

I chew heavily on another chunk of meat. “It happened before I was born.”

It takes her a second to put two and two together before she says, “You had a birth defect?” The gushing water cuts off. “Those are supposed to be fixed in the growth pods. It’s illegal to let one through.”

“Tell that to my genetic contributors,” I mutter. “Dad never told me about it. I never asked.”

“Huh. I thought that arm was one of your classes. Mecha augment, or something.”

“Nah. Just me being unlucky.”

“Explains why it didn’t vanish when I turned on my relic.” She shrugs, dips a finger in her cup for a taste test, and adds one more packet of sugar. “Did Jolie build it?”

“She’s been making them since I was little.” I scoot over when she returns. A corner of her untied robe brushes over the back of my chair. I lift up my carbon-fiber hand, curling the battered fingers in and out like spider legs. “I used to blow through an arm every couple months. This one’s definitely past its expiration date.”

“It looks like it’s been through some shit.”

I pick at a scratch on the top hand plate. “At least it matches the rest of me.”

Without asking for permission, Cal lays the arm out on the table, palm-up. She pores over the tech on the underside. Obsessed with the craftsmanship, like an artist examining a masterwork painting. Her fingertips run along the inside of each finger. An electric tingle shoots through the nerves as she does. “Whole thing is made from genuine Shimano scraps. Shit, Tay. This belongs in a museum, not getting thrown around in street fights.”

“Cool. Let me just go buy a new one from the arm store before I donate it.”

Cal ignores me and a nail against the palm. “I bet Jolie is the only person in the city who still knows how to work with SHI tech. Stuff’s either outlawed or gathering dust in contraband warehouses.” She lifts my arm upright, eyes sparkling as she gets a look at the dented knuckles. “This is so cool.”

That look. The way her lips part ever so slightly in honest curiosity. The way her gaze roams up and down my arm, drinking in the details, adoring the new puzzle for an insatiable intelligence to mull over. It’s a look I remember so fondly from her brother. A familial echo made by a different personality. Thane always expressed with his eyes. For Cal, it’s her mouth. Slight part of the lips, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. Her curiosity would cajole me so easily into lowering my guard because of how similar it is to one I once loved. For a second, I don’t even see her. I see him. Us. A table back home, a lunch uneaten, his fingers tracing the calluses of my real left hand.

Cal notices my staring and slowly lowers my arm back to the table. Holds a croissant and dunks it in the caf, takes a small bite. Then another. The moment’s passed by the third.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

We watch the cityscape together. Bright early morning, the storm’s mostly passed, just some clouds lingering on the horizon and streaks of dew on the glass. There’s a good couple of minutes of sipping silence. A dove and a blackbird land on a tiny metal ledge outside, hopping around each other. They flutter off when Cal pulls up a projector screen on the glass, enlarging it so we both can see.

Electric blue fills my vision. Translucent over the view, news articles and blurry pictures of Aunt Jolie and various landmarks around the city slowly scroll down before dissolving into cyan snowflakes at the edge of the projection.

She keeps idly scrolling. “I assume you aren’t going to want to wait until Jolie finds a way to contact us.”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll even be able to get a message out of the M.” I’m still paying more attention to my arm. Trying to blink away that memory. Put it out of my mind. Talking helps, a bit. “Best I could figure out from the Net is that she’s some kind of political prisoner at the M.”

“That’s putting it as lightly as possible. Even though the Section thinks Mars’ death was an accident, the regime change wasn’t pretty. You’re lucky you were missing for it,” she says, shooting me a side-eye glance. “Your dad was a hero. There’s a reason people are still holding memorial services three years down the line; literally everyone loved him. That doesn’t happen for just anyone. Not even any Champion. There were even rumors that the leagues rigged their own rankings to keep him on the throne way after someone should have replaced him, just because no one thought they could do the job better. Even the worst fighters off the street would have thrown themselves into war like some kind of meat carpet if he’d asked them to.” She shakes her head, pulling up an old picture of my father’s coronation. He’s kneeling before a gnarled and greying old man who’s placing a laurel on his head while tens of thousands cheer on.

“You can’t root out that kind of fanaticism,” she continues. “The only thing Gami could do was lop off the hydra’s head and scare the rest of Mars’ highest supporters into staying out of sight. The public never saw it, but after the coup, he went down the list of the most dangerous ones- pros, corporations, powerful families like the Fangs, even the M’s civic division- and gave them the choice of exile or a public challenge.”

I cross my arms. “Public execution, more like.”

“Yeah. Most of them chose exile or caved.” Cal pauses to dip her croissant in the caf again. She offers it to me in exchange for the rest of the steak, I shake my head. She keeps going. “The people who didn’t capitulate were too few in number to do anything serious. And even if every pleb in the city would have died for Mars, you can’t kill someone like Gami even by drowning him in blood. He’s… well, you’ve seen him. Challenging that is suicide.” She presses a button on her JOY’s shell, swapping the news columns for an aerial shot of Jolie’s office on the forty-second floor of the M. “Jolie was the one exception to the whole kneel-or-exile bargain. It’s the worst kept secret in the capital that she was the real power behind the throne, and Mars was just the front man. He fought the wars and gave the speeches she wrote. But when it came to getting anything done that didn’t involve punching something, she was up in her office crossing every T and dotting every I.”

“No one seemed to have a problem with it,” I say. “It’s a gladiocracy. Warriors aren’t exactly known to enjoy filing taxes.”

“…or planning expenditure spreadsheets, or micromanaging tax brackets. Yeah. Which is how the corporations got so much power in the past. No one cared enough to watch them.” Cal chuckles at some private joke. “Everyone was happy to let Jolie handle the busywork, and she was happy to do it. But it ended with the office of the General Manager being inextricably linked with most every civic process in the Section. As the Director, she’s like a… prime minister, or something. And the Champion is the president. Officially, she doesn’t have any power. But even Gami knows she’s the string that holds the web together. Every civic function of the Section would implode if she were executed, so he’s been keeping her on house arrest in the M ever since the coup. If anyone sympathetic to Mars tries to make a move, Jolie will be the first to go. But we’ve all been wondering if she’s been secretly funding some sort of rebellion anyways.”

“If she was, it would have changed when she saw me alive,” I say. “Jolie might be able to start pulling strings from inside the M, but it’s too dangerous to leave her in there. Gami isn’t an idiot. Better we spring her now than wait for her to be used as bait later.” My fingers drum against the tabletop. “Even if the security cams were blanked out, people are going to start putting the pieces together. Not necessarily that I’m the one responsible, but that someone is, and they’re trying to recover her.” I settle deeper in the chair. “I doubt I’ll get another chance like last night, which means we’ll have to look outside the M for a chance to rescue her. Who keeps an eye on her? Thane?”

“Gami leaves it to his cabal of dedicated enforcers and disciples, his Shadows. They do all of his dirty work; the kind of things that not even a leaguer can get away with publicly.”

“Like your assassinations.”

Cal carries on like I never interrupted. “I’m not technically one of them, but I hang around the Shadows plenty between jobs. The younger ones, at least.” She pulls up a couple profile photos; none of which I recognize. “The group was originally a splinter cell from the M’s counterespionage division under Thane, though now it’s just a handpicked group of operatives. Valance co-captains them when he doesn’t have time. They’re both Gami’s apprentices, but he’s in charge; even though she’s older.”

Valance. That Psi who we saw in the M’s atrium. My fingers tighten under the table as a picture of her and Thane scrolls past. They’re strolling out of a metro station hand-in-hand.

“The rest of the Shadows aren’t nearly as high profile,” Cal says, “and with luck, we’ll never have to deal with them. The only one who could pin us together is Valance, and she didn’t even know who you were. If we strike soon, they won’t have time to figure out that I’ve been lying about you. And the best opportunity for that is-”

“-Orientation day,” I say, jolting up in my chair.

Cal scowls across the table. “Is finishing other peoples’ sentences some sort of ki fighter power I wasn’t aware of?”

“Orientation day was my backup plan if I couldn’t find Jolie at the M,” I explain. “I heard it around E-Town- Jolie shows up once a year in public to give the commencement speech for different universities. Gami won’t risk disrupting that pattern. It reassures people that she’s still around and links him to my father’s legacy.”

Cal nods along. “Rebel against Gami, rebel against Mars’ twin sister. It’s been working so far as a deterrent, except in the Vents.”

“That night we met, you said the commencement ceremony was next week.”

“Three days, yeah. Don’t ask me why they planned it for a Wednesday.”

“So, all we need is a way in. We sneak into the crowd, let Jolie make her speech, and nab her from her escort on the way out when their guard is the lowest.”

“Whoahoh there, A5. Not so fast.” Cal holds up a hand and takes a long sip of her caf. She closes the projection with a dismissive motion, letting the unhindered cityscape of the Glass District fill the window once more. Her elbows come back to rest against the table. “Ignoring the fact that getting into Orientation Day isn’t just a snap of the fingers, their guard isn’t going to be the lowest after her speech.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because I’ve been on her security detail before,” Cal sighs. She sees me glaring and groans. “Hey, I’m not always doing bad guy stuff. I’ve worked for the counterespionage division before. My internship at the M used to be under Jolie, before the coup. I’m the only Shadow she’ll even slightly bother talking to.”

“Highly convenient,” I growl.

“This again. Remember all that arguing we did last night? That smoke that’s not coming out of you anymore?”

I fold my arms quietly.

“Don’t play dumb,” Cal says, rolling her eyes dramatically. “Look. The commencement ceremony is the most obvious place someone would make a play for Jolie- and someone did, the first year after the coup. Her speeches are in public, totally exposed, and a security nightmare because of how many people will physically be present. But,” she holds up a finger, “but, at the same time as the commencement ceremony, there’s also an exclusive gala happening in the Glass District. Foreign dignitaries, corpo lords, lots of pros- it’s the elite of the elite, and they’re all there scoping out the new kids for sponsorships. And rubbing elbows, sipping champagne, cutting deals. The usual.”

She points out the window at one of the tallest buildings deeper in the district, just barely visible as a chrome spire above the others. A huge logo of a fishhook swoop- a character in the old written language of the villages, I recognize it from grade school- marks the building’s fiftieth floor.

“It goes down in the old Shimano Heavy Industries headquarters. After the commencement ceremony, Jolie gets taken straight there to shake hands and make Gami look good for the foreigners.”

“And why is that any better than the commencement ceremony?” I ask. “Foreign dignitaries means foreign fighters. Rich people means good fighters. The kind of firepower that I don’t even know if I can beat. And how the hell are we going to get on the invite list?”

“By already being on it.” Cal tilts her head playfully to the side. “Thane asked me to go in his place weeks ago; even said I could bring a plus-one. It’s the best chance we’ll have. The last place anyone would make a play for your aunt is at that party. No one gets in unless they’re already good with the Champion or people he trusts.”

I pop the last chunk of steak in my mouth, chew slowly, swallow. “There’s no way that would work,” I say. “I’d be seen through in a second. You know what I’m like. I’m not good at parties- I’m good at fighting.”

Cal leans forward and smugly rests her chin in one palm. “You’re hot, farmgirl. Being awkward just adds to the rustic charm.”

She smirks when I break eye contact first.

“Though there is one more thing we’ll have to figure out first.”

“Always is.” I growl and shove away from the table. “What is it this time?”

Her eyes dance over the lip of the mug. “How good you’ll look in black.”