Previous chapter: Dr. Ivo stabilized Aira-9 and removed Soma's primary tracker, but the last signal revealed the clinic's location. Kaelen, Aira, and Ivo escaped through the waste channel toward the Shadeless Market, while the remaining tracker in Aira's body continued transmitting a pulse none of them could explain.
Acid rain never truly reached the Under-Grid.
It was filtered through the city's layers, collected in leaking tanks, then dripped downward as warm yellow water. Drops fell from the pipe joints overhead and burst on the concrete floor, releasing a thin smoke that smelled of burning metal.
Kaelen walked behind Ivo, one hand gripping a pistol, his left arm hanging at his side like a corpse that hadn't been told it was dead. Every time he took a step, the prosthetic joint shuddered. Its hum was faint but regular. Like an insect trapped inside bone.
Aira walked beside him.
She hadn't said much since they left the channel. The wound beneath her ribs was already sealed with a layer of temporary tissue, but blue light still crawled beneath her skin. Sometimes the light jerked. Sometimes the resonance crystal in Kaelen's pocket answered with a pale pulse.
Two pulses.
One in Aira's body.
One in Kaelen's hand.
The city between them pretended not to hear.
At the end of the corridor, a transparent plastic curtain swayed. Beyond it, the Shadeless Market opened its mouth.
The market had been built beneath an old transport line, between the foundations of two towers no longer listed on any official map. Above it, light-dampening layers absorbed the city's illumination. Soma's cameras could see the entrance, but couldn't identify the faces inside. Identity sensors lost their tissue signatures. Medical signals vanished. Even voice-mapping algorithms picked up only a hum mixed with breathing.
Soma called the place a dead zone.
The people inside called it home.
Ivo pulled aside the curtain.
Hot air slammed into them, carrying the smells of cooking oil, ozone, cheap antiseptic, fermented spices, and something sweet, like rotten fruit. Kaelen immediately caught the scent of a leaking steam conduit. Giant pipes growled overhead. Hot vapor burst from their seams, cloaking the alley in white fog.
The market pulsed with light that didn't come from above.
Neon lamps were installed beneath tables, under floor grates, even inside puddles. Blue and red light reflected across faces without casting shadows. Everyone looked like they'd just stepped out of a bad dream: pale skin, glowing eyes, smiles stretched too wide, and hands always close to a weapon or a switch.
A vendor offered synthetic eyes with irises adjustable according to a prospective partner's honesty level. Beside him, a woman sold printed lungs that couldn't tolerate city air for more than three years. At the next kiosk, someone displayed cybernetic fingers in jars of blue fluid.
“Don't stare too long,” Ivo said.
Aira turned to him. “Why?”
“Sometimes the merchandise stares back.”
Aira studied a synthetic head hanging above a kiosk. Its face belonged to a young woman, but its mouth moved in time with the conversations of passersby.
“Is it alive?”
The vendor beneath the head smiled. His teeth were made of black metal.
“If you want to know,” he said, “I can sell you the answer.”
Aira smiled back.
The vendor immediately laughed. “She's funny.”
“She isn't funny yet,” Kaelen said.
“Everyone's funny before they understand the price.”
The vendor raised a metal disc. The Soma emblem had been scraped off its surface, leaving behind a white scar.
Aira tilted her head. “What are you selling?”
“Courage.”
“What form does it take?”
“Like debt. Invisible, but it always makes you walk faster.”
Aira appeared to consider the answer seriously. Kaelen pulled her away before the vendor could decide to interpret interest as consent.
“Don't smile at people offering you merchandise,” he said.
“Why?”
“They assume a smile means you want to buy.”
“What if I don't want to buy?”
“Don't smile.”
Aira looked at him. “You smiled earlier.”
“I did not smile.”
“The corner of your mouth moved.”
“That was nerve damage.”
“Does everyone here have nerve damage?”
“Most of them got it after meeting me.”
Aira studied his face for several seconds longer. Then she imitated Kaelen's expression, awkwardly pulling up one corner of her mouth.
The movement was small.
Too small to be called important.
But Kaelen had seen it before—in the kitchen of their old apartment, when Mira was six and tried to imitate her father's expression after he came home from work. Mira had never been able to make a properly cynical face. Her lips always trembled first, and then she'd laugh because she'd failed.
Aira didn't laugh.
She only waited for his judgment.
Kaelen looked away.
“Terrible,” he said.
“How do I fix it?”
“Don't imitate bad people.”
“Are you a bad person?”
“Next question.”
Ivo quickened his pace. “When you're done discussing Kaelen's personality, the yellow corridor is on the left.”
They entered the market's main route.
The crowd closed around them from every direction. Shoulders collided. Cables hung low and brushed their hair. In some places, hot steam burst from floor grates, forcing people to make little jumps while keeping their faces calm. Music from three kiosks clashed together: pounding bass, a woman's voice singing an advertisement for sleeping pills, and the funeral bells a vendor used to call in customers.
Aira kept looking left and right.
Not with the innocent curiosity she'd shown in the earlier corridors. This time, her eyes were counting. The distance between people. Hand positions. Exit routes. The height of fake cameras. She learned quickly, and Kaelen wasn't sure whether that was reassuring or frightening.
A boy passed carrying a tray of identity chips. He was maybe nine years old, but one leg wore a military support frame. He offered a chip to Aira.
“New name,” he said. “Cheap. No medical history. No debt. No family looking for you.”
Aira stopped.
The boy smiled. His smile was white and wide, too neat for such a small face.
“How much?” Aira asked.
“Free for a pretty face.”
Kaelen caught Aira's wrist before she could take the chip.
The boy kept smiling, but his eyes moved to Kaelen's left hand. To the damaged prosthetic. To the pistol holster. Then to Ivo.
“He's only making an offer,” Aira said.
“He's measuring us,” Kaelen replied.
The boy snickered. “You're smart, Uncle.”
“And you're too young to be working in a place like this.”
“Everyone's too young for a place like this.”
He slipped a chip into Aira's jacket pocket before vanishing into the crowd.
Kaelen took it out immediately.
The chip was thin, black, and warm. A passive transmitter sat on its back.
“Look,” he said to Aira.
“He smiled.”
“Yes.”
“He wants to track us?”
“Now he wants to know whether we're stupid enough to carry it.”
Aira watched the direction the boy had disappeared. “He looked scared.”
Kaelen didn't answer.
In the Under-Grid, fear often wore a smile because smiles were easier to sell.
Ivo pointed to a small kiosk beneath a maintenance stairway. Its curtain was made of cut-up fiber-optic cables. A sign above it read: IDENTITY TAILOR, DATA RESTORER, EXCUSE MAKER.
“That person,” he said.
A woman sat behind the counter, stitching synthetic tissue with a glowing needle. One side of her hair was shaved. On the other, it had been left long and connected to thin cables that fed into a terminal behind her head.
She raised her eyes when they approached.
“Kaelen Vance,” she said.
Kaelen raised his pistol half a centimeter.
She wasn't impressed. “If you shoot, I'll die before I can tell you that everyone in the market already knows you came.”
“Your name?”
“Lysa.”
“Not your real name.”
“Real names are useless here.”
“Good. We don't need to waste time arguing about it.”
Lysa looked at Aira. Her smile appeared slowly, professional and empty.
“So this is the reason.”
“The reason for what?” Aira asked.
“Everyone's talking about you.”
Aira looked over the crowd. Several heads had indeed turned. Some people pretended not to look, but touched their ears too often—the places where hidden communication receivers were implanted.
“Why?”
“Because Soma is offering enough money to make people forget they ever had a mother.”
Kaelen placed a credit chip on the counter. “I need a route to Nix Calder.”
Lysa didn't look at the money.
“A lot of people need Nix.”
“I didn't ask him to fix a stove.”
“He doesn't fix stoves.”
“He doesn't accept strangers, either.”
“Then we have two problems.”
Kaelen leaned forward. “You know who I am.”
“I know your face. Faces are the easiest things to steal.”
“And you know Nix's name.”
“Nix's name is a prayer people usually say before losing something.”
Ivo set a medicine capsule on the counter. “We don't have time for games.”
Lysa glanced at the capsule, then at Aira. “Soma forces have blocked three entrances. They'll sweep the market from bottom to top.”
“How long?” Kaelen asked.
“Twenty minutes if they buy off the guards. Ten if they kill them.”
Kaelen felt a pulse from his jacket pocket.
The resonance crystal answered the blue light beneath Aira's ribs.
Lysa heard something through the cables in her hair. Her expression changed very slightly, but enough for Kaelen to notice.
“Someone's locking down the network,” she said.
“From Soma?”
“No. Closer.”
Aira turned right.
Between two kiosks, an old man was selling used synthetic hands. He smiled at everyone who passed. Behind him, a small camera was hidden inside a heating lamp.
Aira pointed at it.
“He's transmitting our image.”
The old man kept smiling.
Lysa sighed. “Market camera.”
“Can it be shut off?” Kaelen asked.
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
“Not free.”
Kaelen took out his pistol and spun it in his right hand. “You seem very fond of that sentence.”
“I stay alive by loving it.”
Lysa held out her hand. “I can erase the footage from this camera. In exchange, I want something that can't be copied.”
“Like what?”
“Proof.”
Kaelen went silent.
Lysa gave him a thin smile. “I heard you used to be an investigator. People like you always keep one thing from the case they regret most. Not because it's useful. Because without it, they'd have to admit the case is over.”
Kaelen felt the space beneath his jacket.
Hidden in a layer of fabric was a data wafer the size of a fingernail. Its edge was cracked. Its surface held a canceled civil-investigation seal.
Mira's file.
Not the summary Soma had sent him. Not the falsified report he'd signed. This was an original fragment from the camera in their home on the last night—thirty-seven minutes before Mira vanished.
Kaelen had carried it for seven years.
He had never activated it.
Not because he was afraid of seeing Mira.
Because he was afraid of hearing himself not come.
“No,” he said.
Lysa shrugged. “Then find someone else.”
From the main corridor came a short whistle. Twice. Then the sound of heavy metal sliding against a door.
Ivo looked at Kaelen. “They're in.”
Aira looked at Kaelen's face. “That thing matters.”
“Everything matters until you have to choose.”
“If it matters, why do you keep it?”
“Because I haven't finished choosing.”
Lysa tilted her head. “You can store the guilt afterward. This market sells storage space for everything.”
Kaelen took out the wafer.
Neon light passed through the crack in its surface. A date appeared briefly: 14.08.2181. Then Mira's face, only half visible, froze in a damaged frame.
Aira saw it.
Her lips parted slightly.
“She was scared,” she said.
Kaelen looked at her at once. “What?”
“The girl. In the image.”
“How do you know?”
“The way her shoulders lifted. She was trying to smile so the person behind the camera wouldn't worry.”
Kaelen held his breath.
Mira had done that.
Every time she fell. Every time her knees bled. She would lift her little shoulders and say, It's okay, Dad, with a smile that came too quickly.
Kaelen hated Aira for noticing.
He hated himself more for having noticed before she spoke.
“Open it,” Lysa said.
Kaelen handed over the wafer.
Lysa touched it with a reader. The terminal behind her head lit up. Data-light flowed through the cables in her hair. She didn't look at the screen; she watched Kaelen, as though opening someone else's memory was too ordinary an act to make her feel ashamed.
The video appeared on the surface of the counter.
Their old family room.
Yellow light. Blue carpet. The bookshelf that was already gone by the time Soma seized their apartment.
Mira stood in front of the camera. She was seven years old. Her hair was tied into two pigtails, like the first projection Kaelen had seen inside Aira's body.
She clutched a small bird-shaped toy.
“Dad said the camera can't see from inside the closet,” Mira told the recording.
Kaelen's voice came from outside the frame. “A camera can see anything if you turn it on.”
“Then don't turn it on.”
“I didn't turn it on.”
Mira stared into the lens. “If Dad's watching, then Dad's lying.”
Kaelen closed his eyes.
The recording continued.
The front door opened. There was no doorbell. Mira turned. Her smile vanished.
A woman stood in the doorway.
Her face was blurred by signal interference, but she wore a Soma medical uniform. A small drone hovered behind her.
Mira backed away.
Kaelen's voice could still be heard from another room, drawing closer. He was calling someone through a terminal.
The woman crouched in front of Mira.
“I brought medicine for your mother,” she said.
Mira didn't move.
The woman smiled.
Mira tried to smile back.
The movement was the same as Aira's a few minutes earlier: one corner of her mouth moved, then stopped. Waiting for an adult's decision.
Kaelen gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white.
“Play the end,” he said.
Lysa swiped a finger.
The video jumped. Interference filled the image. Mira was no longer in the family room. The camera pointed at the floor. Something fell. Then Mira's voice, very close to the microphone.
“Dad, if you see this—”
The recording cut out.
Kaelen had heard that sentence before.
But this time, he heard something behind Mira's voice.
An electronic pulse.
Three short taps. One long. Three short.
An old access code he'd taught Mira as a game of tapping on the table.
Kaelen looked at Lysa. “Can you recover the missing section?”
“With better equipment.”
“With Nix?”
“With Nix.”
Lysa pulled the wafer from the reader. “Now you understand why I asked for it.”
Kaelen held out his hand.
Lysa didn't return it immediately.
“The transaction isn't finished.”
“I gave you proof.”
“You gave me access to a case. I haven't given you access to Nix.”
“What else?”
“An admission.”
Kaelen raised his pistol.
Lysa didn't flinch. “Not for me. For the market.”
Around them, conversations began to quiet. Vendors and customers watched. Hot steam burst from the pipes, obscuring some faces. There were no shadows to hide anyone.
Lysa raised the wafer so it could be seen.
“This proof comes from the Mira Vance case,” she said loudly. “Proof Soma withheld. Proof that the child declared missing may have been taken alive to one of their facilities.”
Whispers spread.
Kaelen felt something worse than a gun barrel aimed at him: the attention of a crowd.
“Don't,” he said.
“The market needs a reason to protect you.”
“People don't protect others for reasons.”
“That's right. They protect others for a price.”
Lysa looked at the crowd. “Anyone who sells their location will lose access to medical routes for one month.”
A man from the lung kiosk shouted, “And who's paying for the loss?”
“Kaelen Vance,” Lysa answered.
Every eye returned to him.
Kaelen almost laughed.
“With what?”
Lysa raised the wafer. “With the truth.”
“You can't eat truth.”
“In this city, truth can make people afraid to buy the wrong thing.”
The whistle sounded again from the main corridor. This time, it was closer.
Soma entered the market.
People moved, but they didn't panic. They closed curtains, killed lights, and hid their merchandise. The Under-Grid survived not because it was brave. It survived because everyone had practiced being cowardly at exactly the right moment.
Aira looked at the faces around her one by one.
Some people smiled at them.
Some raised two fingers, a sign that they were safe.
Others looked down, too quickly.
Aira grabbed Kaelen's right arm.
“Don't trust them,” she said.
Kaelen looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because they smile before they decide.”
The sentence was simple.
But the way she said it reminded Kaelen of Mira standing in front of the closet, watching adults through the crack in the door. Mira had always known first when someone was lying. Not from the words, but from the second before the words came out.
Aira looked at Lysa. “Will she return the thing?”
“After we meet Nix,” Lysa answered.
“What if she doesn't return it?”
“Then,” Kaelen said, “I'll shoot her terminal.”
Lysa smiled.
Aira immediately tensed.
Kaelen caught the change. “That's not a smile you need to return.”
“Why?”
“Because she's pleased you're threatening her.”
“Is that bad?”
“Usually.”
“Usually isn't always.”
Kaelen looked at her. “You're starting to sound like someone.”
Aira didn't smile. “I'm trying.”
A woman's voice came over the market speakers.
“All official routes are closed. Soma inspection is in progress. Citizens are advised to remain calm and keep their faces to themselves.”
Lysa folded the wafer into a signal-blocking sleeve. “We're leaving.”
She led them through a narrow alley between the organ kiosks and the prosthetic workshop. The floor was lower there and the steam thicker. Hot pipes brushed their shoulders. Kaelen had to duck to avoid hitting the large valves.
Behind them, the voices of Soma's forces spread.
“Network inspection. Everyone stay where you are.”
No one stayed where they were.
They merely moved slowly enough to look obedient.
Lysa stopped in front of an unmarked metal door. She pressed her palm against it. The door scanned body temperature, not identity.
“Don't touch anything,” she told Aira.
Aira studied the scanner. “Why?”
“Because this door doesn't like surprises.”
“Can a door like things?”
“A door made by Nix can hate.”
The door opened.
Beyond it was a small room with three screens, two chairs, and a table covered in cables. A young man sat with his back to them. His hair was shaved very short. The back of his neck was crowded with connectors. One hand held two terminals at once while the other pressed a button on a device shaped like a toaster.
“Lysa,” he said without turning.
“Still alive,” Lysa replied.
“Shame.”
“Kaelen Vance.”
The man's fingers stopped.
He turned slightly.
Nix Calder had the face of someone who rarely slept and was always calculating the price of other people's sleep. One eye was natural, a dull brown. The other was a clear lens projecting rows of code across its own iris.
His gaze fell to Kaelen's prosthetic.
“Cheap series-twelve model,” he said. “Have you replaced the shoulder motor?”
“No.”
“Figures. Your hand sounds like a closet door.”
“And you sound like someone who wants to lose a tooth.”
Nix smiled. “I like him.”
Aira looked at him. “He doesn't like people.”
“I know. That's what makes it fun.”
Ivo shut the door. “We need your help.”
Nix noticed the resonance crystal faintly visible in Kaelen's pocket. The lens of his eye adjusted focus.
“No,” he said.
“Before you even know what we need?”
“I know enough.”
“How much?” Kaelen asked.
Nix raised one finger. “First, don't lie about what you're carrying.”
“No.”
“Good. Second, don't touch my equipment.”
Aira lowered her hand from a glowing cable.
“Third,” Nix continued, “don't bring Soma forces to my door.”
“They're already in the market.”
“Then you've failed the third condition before we've even met.”
Nix turned back to his screen. “Get out.”
Kaelen placed the data wafer on the table.
Nix stopped.
“Where did you get that?”
“The Mira Vance case.”
The digital lens in his eye narrowed.
“The case closed seven years ago?”
“The case they forced closed.”
Nix touched the wafer with a pair of tongs. He didn't read it immediately. He examined the cracked edge, the old seal, and the burn pattern on its surface.
“This thing has an erasure signature.”
“Can it be restored?”
“Partially.”
“How partially?”
“Enough to make you suffer more.”
Kaelen stared at him. “I can pay.”
Nix laughed without humor. “With what?”
“Proof.”
“Proof isn't money. Proof is a reason for other people to raise their prices.”
“Then name your price.”
Nix looked at Aira.
Aira didn't move. But the blue light in her neck pulsed once.
“You're carrying an active resonance module,” Nix said.
“She isn't an object,” Kaelen replied.
“I didn't say she was.”
“Your eyes did.”
“My eyes calculate risk.”
Aira stepped forward. “What is my price?”
Kaelen turned. “Aira.”
“She wants to know.”
Nix leaned back. “To read the encryption, I need access to your organic module. Not to take your memories. Only to map the protective layers.”
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Risk?”
“If I make a mistake, you could lose one or two memory circuits.”
Kaelen raised his pistol. “No.”
Nix raised both hands. “I wasn't finished. If I do nothing, Soma will find that resonance in under an hour. They won't need to take your whole body. They only need to make the city's network recognize your pulse.”
Aira looked at Kaelen.
“If I agree,” she said, “will you answer your questions?”
“There are no guarantees.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Kaelen felt something crack inside him, but not like the prosthetic. Something older. More fragile.
“I don't know,” he said.
Nix gave a short whistle. “An honest answer. Dangerous, but interesting.”
Footsteps sounded outside the door.
One.
Two.
They stopped.
Someone knocked three times. Fast. Slow. Fast.
Aira immediately grabbed Kaelen's wrist.
“Not regular troops,” she whispered.
Nix froze. “You recognize that pattern?”
“It was in my memories.”
Kaelen looked at the wafer on the table. Three short taps. One long. Three short. Mira's code was different, but the rhythm was almost the same.
The door was knocked on again.
This time, a voice outside said, “Nix, we know you're hiding them.”
Nix shut off every screen.
“You have an exit?” Ivo asked.
“Two.”
“Safe ones?”
“No.”
Kaelen took the wafer. Nix stopped his hand.
“Not yet,” he said.
“If you want to get paid, stay alive.”
“If you take that thing out, I have no reason to help you.”
“And if you keep it?”
“At least I'll have a reason to chase you.”
The door shuddered. Someone outside inserted a breaching tool.
Kaelen looked at Aira. “Can you clear a path?”
“There are three people outside.”
“Can you stop them without killing them?”
Aira fell silent.
It was a more honest answer than Kaelen wanted.
Nix opened a panel in the floor. Beneath it, a narrow cable route descended into the maintenance levels.
“Go in one at a time,” he said. “I'll lock the door and divert them.”
“Why help us?” Kaelen asked.
Nix looked at the wafer.
“Because I want to know if the child is really dead.”
Kaelen almost replied, but the door exploded inward.
Metal shards flew. Ivo ducked. Aira moved faster. She covered Kaelen with her shoulder, and the first bullet struck the synthetic layer across her back.
Aira didn't fall.
Kaelen shot out the corridor light. Darkness broke apart in the flashes from his muzzle.
Nix yanked a cable from the table. The entire room filled with a deafening electrical shriek. The breached door slammed shut again, pinning a soldier's arm in the gap.
A scream.
“Now!” Nix shouted.
Ivo went down first. Kaelen tucked the wafer into his pocket, then followed. Aira jumped in last. Before descending, she looked at the trapped soldier.
The soldier was still alive. Fear showed on his face behind the visor.
Aira raised her hand.
Blades emerged from her fingers.
“Don't,” Kaelen said.
Aira turned to him.
“He'll call the others.”
“Then disable his communications.”
Aira looked at the soldier. She grabbed his helmet, tore the communications module from the side of his head, and let him drop.
She didn't kill him.
But she wasn't gentle.
“Learn fast,” Kaelen said.
Aira descended into the tunnel.
Nix sealed the panel from above. They crawled through the darkness, surrounded by hot cables. Ivo swore ahead of them. Kaelen gritted his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. His prosthetic scraped the floor and sparked whenever it touched a pipe.
Aira was at the rear.
“How far?” Kaelen asked.
“Twenty meters to the service line,” Nix answered through a small communicator he tossed into the opening. “After that, there's a maglev maintenance station.”
“A train?”
“Maintenance train.”
“No route to the surface?”
“There is. But Soma monitors every road up.”
“So we're taking the train?”
“If you have a better plan, save it until I'm no longer helping you.”
Kaelen looked at Aira behind him. “You hear that?”
“I hear everything.”
“Including Nix's price for helping us?”
“Twenty minutes of access to my memories.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why?”
“Because Nix hasn't fixed anything yet.”
“But he already wants it.”
Aira pulled a small wafer from a hidden pocket.
Kaelen stopped crawling.
“Where did you get that?”
“When you handed it to Lysa.”
“So you stole it.”
“She made a copy.”
“Not the same thing.”
“Correct.” Aira handed it to him. “The original is with Lysa. This is a damaged copy.”
Kaelen held it. “Why did you take it?”
“Because you need it.”
“No. I need answers.”
“If the answer is in the missing thing, don't you need the thing too?”
Kaelen couldn't argue.
Aira didn't know whether that was advice, a memory, or something she'd created herself.
Maybe all three.
“Don't do that again without telling me.”
“Is that a rule?”
“Yes.”
“What if the rule keeps us from surviving?”
“Break it.”
Aira nodded. “Your rules aren't very good.”
“No one ever said otherwise.”
They reached the end of the tunnel.
The grating ahead vibrated. Beyond it, magnetic rails groaned. Yellow lights blinked along a narrow platform. A maintenance train emerged from the darkness, its hull covered in rust and bullet scars.
Nix spoke through the communicator.
“Get on when the train slows.”
“What if it doesn't slow?”
“Don't get on.”
“Very well thought out.”
“Thank you.”
The train approached.
Not slowly enough.
Ivo jumped first and nearly lost his footing. Kaelen caught him by the collar with his right hand. His prosthetic failed when he tried to reach for a second handhold.
Aira jumped.
She caught Ivo with one hand, Kaelen with the other, and held all three of them against the side of the moving train.
The strain reopened the wound in her ribs. Blue light burst from the seams.
“Get on!” Aira shouted.
Kaelen saw the wind battering her face. For a moment, she wasn't Aira-9. Not a vessel, not a weapon, not a puzzle wearing Mira's voice.
She was simply someone who refused to let them go.
Kaelen kicked the side door with his boot. It opened. Ivo rolled inside. Kaelen pulled himself in with his right hand. Aira followed, then collapsed onto the train floor.
Behind them, the market lights shrank.
The Shadeless Market wasn't truly safe. It never was. But for a few seconds, it had swallowed them without demanding blood.
Nix was still in his room, with Soma's forces and the original wafer that might contain the remnants of Mira's voice.
Kaelen looked at Aira.
“Why did you take the copy?”
Aira sat against the train wall. Her hand pressed against the reopened wound. “Because you needed it.”
“No. I need answers.”
“If those answers are in the missing thing, don't you need the thing too?”
Kaelen couldn't argue.
Aira pulled a small packet of food from her jacket pocket. He had no idea when she'd taken it. The crumpled wrapper held a dense piece of bread she'd bought or stolen from the market.
She opened the wrapper, smelled the lingering heat, then blew on the surface three times before taking a bite.
Kaelen froze.
Mira had done that.
Always three times. Never two. Never four. She believed food that was too hot would get angry if you blew on it any longer.
Aira bit into the bread. Her face immediately tightened.
“Bitter,” she said.
“It is.”
“Why do people sell it?”
“Because people get hungry.”
Aira chewed slowly. “Did you eat this before?”
“A long time ago.”
“With Mira?”
Kaelen looked out the train window. Outside, Aethelgard moved in broken lines of light. Towers rose through the fog. Soma advertisements clung to the sides of buildings, showing Vektor Vane with a face that never sweated.
“Yes,” Kaelen said.
“Did she blow on it three times too?”
“She taught me.”
Aira looked at the bread in her hand. Then she blew on it once more.
Something pressed against Kaelen's chest.
“Don't,” he said.
Aira stopped. “What?”
“Don't do things she did.”
“I didn't know I was doing it.”
“Now you know.”
“Should I stop?”
Kaelen wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her the habit belonged to Mira, that Aira had no right to touch it, that every resemblance was a knife slipped between his ribs.
But Aira waited for his answer the same way Mira had waited for judgment in front of the camera—shoulders slightly raised, smile restrained, body ready to accept someone else's decision.
Kaelen looked away.
“No,” he said.
Aira lowered her hand. “Why?”
“Because habits aren't property.”
He swallowed.
“And because you're allowed to like bad food in your own way.”
Aira nodded. She took another bite.
The train entered a darker tunnel. The engine's rumble drowned out their breathing. Ivo sat across from them, examining Aira's wound with whatever tools he had.
“Your wound's open,” he said.
“Can it be fixed?”
“It can be closed.”
“That's not the same answer.”
“In this city, the same answer costs too much.”
Kaelen stared at the copied wafer in his hand. The crack along its edge held a blue glimmer like Aira's light.
Nix didn't yet have full access.
Lysa had the original proof.
Soma knew Aira's pulse was still alive.
And now Kaelen knew something more dangerous than a resemblance in face or voice.
Aira wasn't remembering Mira.
She was choosing what to do with the things Mira had left behind.
The train lurched violently.
The cabin lights went out.
From the front came the sound of metal striking the hull.
Ivo reached for his weapon.
Aira stood, though the wound in her ribs began glowing again.
Kaelen forced his prosthetic to move. The metal fingers twitched once, then locked.
Outside the window, three red points raced alongside the train.
Hunter drones.
A synthetic voice rang from the cabin speakers.
“Subject Aira-9. Surrender. Kaelen Vance has been designated a terrorist protector and may be eliminated without due process.”
Aira looked at Kaelen.
“Are we going to surrender?”
Kaelen checked his pistol. One half-full magazine. A damaged prosthetic. A train headed for the Industrial Belt. Nix left behind. The original proof in the hands of someone he didn't know.
He should have calculated the odds.
But the resonance crystal in his jacket pulsed once.
Then once more.
Like a child tapping on a table from behind a door.
“No,” Kaelen said.
Aira nodded.
“Why?”
Kaelen looked at the red lights outside, then at Aira's shadowless face.
“Because they smile before they take something.”
For the first time, Aira smiled first.
Not Mira's smile.
Not Soma's smile.
Her smile was still awkward, slightly crooked, and entirely her own.
Then she turned to face the train door.
Beyond the metal, the first drone crashed into them.
And Aethelgard opened its mouth once more.