Beams of sunset scald my eyes as we ride the metro back to the surface. Hard plastic bumps against my back. My feet tap the metal floor with uneven rhythm, disturbed every time the train skips over a gap between rails. All unfamiliar sensations.

It’s rare that I ever ride like this, especially on my own. When you can soar the skies to your heart’s content and leap five stories in the breadth of a thought, letting technology travel for you doesn’t quite hold the same appeal. Can’t run everywhere, though. Sometimes you need to walk. Especially when you’re trying not to let your twin sister see how many near misses made cuts in your shirt.

Our train breaks out of the undercity like a surfacing snake, following a long and circuitous path above the capital’s defined overcity districts. The Electric Town is still a ways off. We’ll travel past the Glass’ research sector and Pavilion’s sprawling commercial parks before we reach home. The metro descends to street level for a stop at each station on our way, dipping back into underground tunnels for brief moments in the older districts. Crowds cycle in and out towards the front of the train. Bangs echo through the ceiling as flyers land and take off between stops, riding the roof in short spurts. Neon billboards and gleaming skyscrapers flash past the windows. The Metro Blockhouse’s skyward lights grow ever-larger on the horizon.

I keep my eyes on that famous tower while we ride. It’s a more friendly sight than the sister who broods right beneath it, glasses silently glaring at me from across the aisle. Her hair reveals its true color at sunset, a dried-blood shade of reddish brown like the rash on her forehead. Twins though we are, the older we grow, the more pronounced our minor differences become. Temper most of all.

Jolie looks more Ajax’s sister than mine in that regard. They’re a perfect match side by side. I offered the seat beside mine to the gunslinger as soon as we got on the metro. Jolie wouldn’t have survived the ride home otherwise. Our new friend’s boots are splayed out like a fan so her airboard can rest between, and then a little more just because she can. She watches the rest of the train with a lazy danger; like a resting wolf in an unfamiliar den.

“Mori,” she answers, when I finally ask her name. “Emilia Mori, from the concrete.”

“Mars. From here.”

We bump fists casually. Her knuckles are like a child’s against mine. Across the aisle, Ajax’s eyes narrow the most minute amount.

“No need. I already know who you are,” Mori calls over, cocking her head to the side. A brushstroke of orange hair falls over her eyes as she tips her chin up. “The prince from the villages.” She pantomimes a gesture not unlike puppetstrings. “Where’s your big floofy robe? The one all your kind wear?”

“In my apartment,” he snorts. “Where’s your manners?”

“In my much shittier apartment.” She smirks. “You three look like hobos, by the way. Do you think we all dress like that?”

“We?”

“You know, Venters.”

An awkward silence follows her question. The metro shakes again as we cross the border of the Electric Town. Neon shadows begin leaking through the windows. Signs and posters blur into a rainbow smear outside.

Mori’s lips purse. “Must’ve touched a nerve on that one.”

“It’s not worth a response,” Jolie curtly replies. “We’ve got bigger things to focus on than arguing about stereotypes and five credit disguises. Things like this.” The indigo vial flits into her fingers, spinning like a stylus. “Want to fill in some blanks?”

Mori shrugs. “I’ve been hitting Dynasty’s deals for years. Rent’s going up. Had to match my income somehow. A friend of mine who knows some names at the Orange told me about a delivery that the syndicate was having fitted with antiscreening panels-”

“-highly illegal,” Jolie pointedly interjects.

“-and I decided to go check it out for myself. Figured I could sell some of the loot on a black market in a month or two. Pay back some debts.”

“Then why didn’t you take more?” I ask.

She motions to the three of us. “Couldn’t exactly do that with the darlings of the uni streams watching me. You guys totally botched my job, by the way.”

“We saved your life,” I interject.

“I could have pulled that heist on my own, Number Two.”

I blink rapidly after the insult, then let out a tired sigh. Steeple my fingers under my chin as I lean forward. “I doubt that.”

“I’m sure you do. You’ve got wannabe hero written all over you.”

“For what it’s worth,” Ajax says, “Mars may doubt, but I know. You weren’t making it out of those docks alive if we didn’t intervene.”

His eyebrows narrow, daring her to try and turn his rank into an insult. Mori shrugs and crosses her arms behind her airboard, kicking back in her chair. “And that’s why I’m still rocking with you. Where are we going, by the way?”

Jolie and I say the tired answer together.

“Home.”

-

We catch all the manner of strange looks on the limping, grimacing walk from the metro stop to our apartment complex. The lift ride up is silent save for background electronics. Mori hums some NeoPop tune that’s been all over the radio lately. Jolie hides behind a JOY screen. Ajax and I do everything we can to avoid looking at each other. He already protested in coming here, citing everything from nighttime practice to a rigorous sleep schedule. Only Jolie managed to convince him in the end, reminding him of the minor league fighter we’re both investigating.

All the lights are off when we crack the door open. Outside, night steals over the city like an ocean tide. Jolie and I go about flicking on the lights in the kitchen while the others enter. Mori glances about the living room, struggling not to look like she’s checking it out. She runs a hand up one of the walls as high as she can reach. Wiggles her fingertips at the end, still below the ceiling. I glance back to the entryway when Ajax curses quietly. He’s taking off his shoes and struggling with one of the latches.

I shake my head and leave him to it. “Villagers.”

“It’s proper manners to take your shoes off when entering a home. You’re the savages. Not me.”

Mori strips her boots off and tosses them back into the entryway, earning a spiteful look from Jolie. “You’ve got a funny accent, dude. Came from the rice paddies, but you talk like someone popped you out in a penthouse.”

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“One has to adapt to new battlefields, so our champion says.”

“Oh yes, the old man. Lot of wisdom he’s got. Twenty years of being on the throne, and what exactly has he done for us?”

I start counting off my fingers. “Grown international prestige, defined our legacy as martial artists, mandated programs to funnel more kids into collegiate leagues and universities, doubled engagement with the entertainment sector…”

Jolie raises an eyebrow. I shrug back. I can study too, even if I don’t bother to do it often.

Mori rolls her eyes. “Real things, not just stuff they parrot on the streams.”

“Those are real things. Champion Fang is a symbol of everything that makes our Section great. He’s kept the peace for two decades.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” Mori snorts and leans her airboard against a dormant stream screen hanging from the wall. “Peace from your windows, maybe. Ever taken a real look at what goes on downstairs? Venters don’t get chances like you guys do. We’re the drain.” Real spite seeps into her voice, the first break I’ve heard in her humorous shell. “I’d love for him to go down to the Orange, even just once. Bet he wouldn’t brush his mustache and talk about progress and unity on the streams so much if he saw what they do in the cages.”

Jolie loudly clears her throat, ending the topic before it can go any further. “We’ve all got injuries, and I’m not cooking dinner after almost being gunned down. Who wants takeout?”

Two I do’s and one What kind? come back. We all look at Ajax as he leans out of the entryway.

“What? Just thought I’d ask. I don’t like seafood.”

Mori cackles to herself. “A village hick who doesn’t like seafood. Good one.”

Jolie just humors him with an exhausted, tight-lipped smile. “It’s overseas cooking. The best I know.”

“Good for me.” He gives her a thumbs up and disappears around the corner again. “Just write down your code, I’ll pay you back.”

I touch Jolie reassuringly on the shoulder before I leave her to order. Her hand catches my wrist and squeezes back hard. “What you did back there was very, very stupid,” she says, quietly enough the others won’t overhear.

“Did you expect me to sit still and watch?”

“Did I expect you to? No.” Jolie rakes a full hand of nails through her hair, front to back. Deliberating over untying her ponytail. “We can’t get in over our heads, Mars. If you get hurt before the winter tournament…”

“I know. And Ajax knows. Everything’s riding on it.” I take the vial from the countertop and hold it up to a light, watching the refractions within. “But there’s more to this now, too. Bishop’s disappearance. Prazen is a league fighter who’s working with the syndicate. The arena is silent on it all. We can’t just let it go.”

“It’s not just that you could have been hurt,” she murmurs. “They were shooting to kill. You could have died. We should take this to the authorities.”

“Let’s see what you found, first. What did you even scan?”

“Stripped the manifest from the shipping container. I can’t run biometrics on that vial unless we take it to a lab with a pro Biohancer, though.”

I nod and heft it again. “It’s heavier than it looks.”

“Mhm.”

A short pause passes between us. The comfortable silence of siblings. So often we talk without even needing words. Ours is a simple language. Slight body language and fiddling with hands. It reassures me to see she’s still her usual self, despite the unusual company.

“Go shower,” Jolie says, reading my mind. “I’m going to call down to the takeout place.”

Telltale windy aura follows me into the washroom even after I shut the door, intensifying when I crank on the water and slump down against the tile. Red blood sloughs down towards the drain as I peel my ragged disguise off. Cuts and near misses from bullets and blades weep around my torso. I trace them with a fingertip, wincing when I draw too close. When they heal, they’ll join the litany of other minor scars that chart the storied history of my lifelong warpath. I’m sure I’ll gather many yet before I’m done. I could have them fixed in a few hours’ time if I found a Biohancer with a specialty in cosmetics, but they’re worth more to me than the cost it would take to erase them. Each one is a reminder of a mistake. And I can’t be making those if I’m going to become the champion someday.

I shower quick. Select whatever soap Jolie last used from a display mounted in the wall, something with coffee and wood in the name. Autoscrubbing jets do their work in cleaning off the grime of battle. Dead skin, blood, and soot makes a slurry as it drains between my feet. Fresh clothes rest just inside the door when I step out. Soft fabric warms my skin as I press it to my face. Jolie must have snuck the garments in. Our father used to heat our clothes like this every night. We’ve done it for each other for so long now that I forget when we started.

Rolling up the too-tight sleeves, I pause to grab my JOY from where I left it hovering beside the mirror, then flick open one of the cosmetic menus. I absentmindedly wipe at the mirror with a rag while paging through screens. A quick scan fixes my crimson hair and returns its usual luster. Then, on second thought, I have my JOY run a shaving scan too. Always feels worse than an actual razor, but it takes a fraction of the time. I’m not complaining.

I return to a surprisingly orderly room. Soft village instrumentals play from Ajax’s JOY in the kitchen. The dueling prince himself is using a high end nanospray and wrapping Jolie’s rash in bandaging. Interesting. She’s picky about being touched like that. Mori, still in her battle-torn skinsuit and cape, keeps trying to strike up a lighter from atop one of the couch arms. She pauses when it finally catches, mouth open as Jolie lets out a very pointed cough.

My sister nods to the balcony. “Do you mind?”

Mori shrugs and dips outside without contest. Cold nighttime air rushes in until I follow her out and close the door behind.

She leans against the railing. Lit by a full moon above and a neon paradise below. Orange hair distending like grass strands as she frees it from her hood, letting it drift over the city. Her one-shouldered cape undulates like a tattered flag of war. That battered black-white revolver, a lifetime of scratches catching and shining in the moonlight. I watch her from behind for a moment, one hand still on the door. She’s surprisingly fit for an Elemental. Most who share her affinity don’t bother with gyms. Their power is reliant on strength of mind, not body.

The untouched lighter continues to burn between her fingertips. Deeper in the city, the metro soars by with a sound like summer gales. Lights blink on and off in the distance. Music drifts up faint from nearby streets. Human voices with it. Eventually, hers becomes one of them.

“Going to keep staring?”

I let out a quiet noise and join her at the railing. She flicks the unused lighter out over the alley beneath us. Just pushing boundaries.

“You know,” she says, side-eyeing me when I lean beside, “the streams actually manage to undersell your arms.”

“I’m surprised they spend much time on me at all, given my record.”

“The prince back there is a big deal, but he’s cold iron. You smile. You laugh. You’ve got fan clubs. Even people in the Vents get together to watch your big fights.”

“Fan clubs? You’re joking.”

“Maybe.” She smiles faintly. Goes back to watching the city. “On the streams, you’re always the underdog, like them. They like having something to believe in. Lets them dream a bit.”

“That’s a hard way of looking at it.”

“It’s reality.”

“I think reality is better than you give it credit for.”

She points to the trees in a nearby rooftop garden. “Get one of those to grow in the Vents, and I might believe you.”

I let her words lie to rest. Changing winds take their place, mixing our hair together as it blows to the east. My gaze stays forwards and up, towards the spotlights and five-story banners deeper in the Electric Town.

Mori’s finger flicks my arm to get my attention. I snap back to reality with a quick shake of my head.

“Hm?”

“You picked this apartment, didn’t you? Not your sister.”

“How’d you know?”

She nods towards the M. We’re facing it directly from the balcony.

I settle my forearms against the railing. “That obvious?” I ask, letting a wistful grin cross my face. “I’ve watched what happens in that tower my entire life. I swore that someday, I’m going to stand on top of it.”

“That’s a pretty big goal. You know, being the best in the Section. It’s a job only one guy can do.”

I shrug. “You can’t help what you dream of.”

Her nose wrinkles, gaze trailing down the alley. “Easy to say from a view like this.”

A long pause stretches between us. Autumn chill descends to fill it. I turn from the lights and motion with a finger for her to follow.

“Come on. It’s cold, let’s get inside.”