Chapter 2: Jade

LuxeGirlie444: omg jade plz don’t get killed on my bday i’ll be so sad

“Oh em gee, is it your birthday Luxe Girlie? That’s so deluxe!” My whisper disappears into the night air as I move further down the Great Fault Bridge. After Wes’s vigil, I claimed a case of too many stuffed mushrooms and excused myself to my quarters.

Then I got to work.

I lied to my chat, told them that attending Wes’s one-year vigil put the frailty of life in perspective for me, and that I was going to start a new daredevil livestream segment full of things I’d always wanted to do. Number one on that list, of course, being ‘sneak into the Boundary’. Entering the Boundary requires me to cross over the Great Fault Bridge that leads out of New Palisades, undetected. A quick review of streetview maps showed me that would be nearly impossible, with surveillance cameras on every lamp post that lines the bridge’s wide avenue. Then it occurred to me that maybe the best way to get across the bridge wasn’t over it… but under it.

And that’s how I ended up here, hanging upside down hundreds of feet above the ground, holding on to the alternatively-generated magni-grips in my hands for dear life.

SilverMommy94[AG]: jade whitaker, certified badass

zzzIHeartJadezzz: cant believe she’s just streaming this for free

“You know I’d do anything for you guys!” I pull the glowing blue magni-grip from the underside of the bridge, and reattach it another foot forward. “Hope you’re liking the new segment!” None of my followers know about the Buzzard, or the note AG-Wes showed me. I feel bad keeping the truth from them, but getting answers about Wes’s disappearance is the only thing I care about right now. The truth can live inside me, until I’m ready to reveal it.

The magni-grip constructs securing me to the underside of the bridge go fuzzy for a second, and I take a trembling breath to steady myself. I’ve been hanging upside down under the largest bridge in New Palisades for twenty-five minutes, and the strain of fighting gravity is beginning to get to me. But at least for now, the constructs are holding strong. I’m grateful; until a few hours ago, the most difficult construct I’d tried to cast in months was a self-spinning makeup brush caddy. Wes and I used to challenge each other to see who could cast the most elaborate constructs on our dates— I still remember the way his jaw dropped when I revealed my masterpiece: a five-foot tall recreation of Mount Rushmore featuring Elvis, Aretha Franklin, and Bugs Bunny serenading him with “Happy Birthday” in perfect harmony.

After Wes disappeared, I didn’t cast anything for months— even the most elaborate construct couldn’t bring him back, so what did it matter? But now here I am, using my cuffs and the power of my own mind to create these magni-grips out of thin air, so that I can find my way back to him.

It feels right.

Inch-by-inch, I shuffle across the Great Fault Bridge. I’m halfway across now, which means I’m halfway from the border of New Palisades to the slums that surround our glittering city. I can almost smell the Boundary’s stench from here, growing stronger with every thunk along the steel, moving me closer to my goal. I tilt my chin up to assess my progress, blowing my bright green bob out of my eyes. The end of the bridge is in sight, but it’s still too far. I check the time display in the corner of my vision. 11:37 PM. Twenty-three minutes to go. If I don’t hit my mark by then, this was all for nothing. But as I take my next step, an electronic whirring sound overhead pulls my attention, and I freeze.

Security drones?

I haven’t heard that sound since I was a little girl, when the Bounders’ rebellions left the residents of New Palisades fearing for our lives. The noise transports me twelve years back in time. I was a child. I should’ve been learning to read, or count to a hundred. Instead, my lessons were about survival:

Don’t leave the compound walls.

Don’t trust the funny men in strange face paint.

Above all, don’t watch the news.

I really should’ve listened to that last one. I’ll never scrub those images from my brain. But what’s a security drone doing here? Now?

CharlieFitzW: lol wut is happening. is she lagging?

RosieGemz22: no effing idea but i love that nail color. jade can u link?

The chat messages floating in my vision begin to blur, as the whirring turns shrill in my ear. The drone must be right above me on the bridge, only a few feet of steel separating us. The chaos and inescapable grief of the riot years washes over me like a flood. I’m seven years old again, and I don’t know if I’m safe in my own bed at night. I don’t know where my father’s gone, or why my mother can’t get the words out when I ask her what happened to him, or if he’s ever coming back. I’m seven years old, and I don’t know how to hold on to the hope that things will ever be okay again.

I don’t know how to hold on.

The magni-grips vanish like the apparition they always were. I’m free-falling, down toward the enormous canyon that the Great Fault Bridge straddles, the canyon that makes my alternatively-generated constructs possible in the first place. Do I have time to cast a new construct before the ground finally rushes up to meet me?

VolcanoWave002: holy shit. this is real?

CharlieFitzW: glad i finally subscribed for jade whitaker’s very last livecast. damn, what a way to go.

HvnSnt77: no way is this real, i call bs

I’m probably too late, but I have no choice but to try. Once I close my eyes and spread my arms wide, it takes less than a second to feel the pulsing energy, invisible but ever-present in New Palisades. Thanks to the Veil— the holographic dome that covers New Palisades— anything alternatively-generated in our city can become real. All a creator has to do is let the Veil’s infinite computing power course through them, inviting them to wield it for their own designs.

I feel that power now, as if every cell of my being hums with static electricity. Channeling the Veil like this used to set my teeth on edge, give me headaches I had to sleep off for days. But now it’s as secondhand as breathing. With enough time and focus, I can make anything I want. I embrace the unsettling friction building in my bones, and clear my mind of every thought but one:

I create my own reality.

A glowing silver-blue rope with a shimmering grappling hook shoots from my lefthand cuff, aiming for the underside of the bridge that’s still tumbling away from me. The hook catches on a truss, and the AG-rope snaps tight, swinging me up and away from the gaping Fault that almost consumed me. When the path of my arc reaches the far side of the bridge, I grab on with everything I’ve got, and wait for my heart to eventually stop slamming against my chest.

HvnSnt77: what the hell happened? why’d her constructs glitch like that?

RosieGemz22: yay jade ur alive! drop that nail color bestie?

“Of course.” I gulp down a breath. “This is ‘celestial glow’ and ‘abyss’ by Crescent— you can get free shipping with code JADEFREE at checkout. I did the designs myself. Didn’t it turn out cute?” As I blink my surroundings back into focus, I wiggle my fingers for the camera on my streaming headset, which is nestled right beside my left temple. The phosphorescent white moons and stars on my nails glow against matte black polish. If I could see the sky—the real sky— not just the projected art and simulated constellations peeking between the Veil’s holographic advertisements— would the same moon and stars greet me?

Luckily, my chat doesn’t press me about losing hold of my constructs. A few assume I did it for the shock value, which I’ll admit is a delightful bonus. With glee, I watch the live viewer count tick up, from ten and a half million to almost double that. The count number hovers just over the current runtime of my livestream— three-hundred-and-sixty-four days, twenty hours, seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds— and the description that hasn’t changed since I started casting almost a year ago:

I think my boyfriend’s dead.

Those were the first words that came to me, after the hours of stunned silence and grief that followed the news of Wes’s disappearance in the Melee. To this day, I have no idea what possessed him to sign up in the first place. The Melee isn’t even for us. It was originally designed to incentivize the Bounders to give up their archaic ways and embrace AG for the godsend that it is.

The rules are simple: the first one to the finish line across the desert wins a million credits, plus an official pardon for any debts owed or crimes committed. But the Melee is more than a race. Racers are given AG weapons, to attack their competitors and gain the upper hand. Using the weapons is entirely optional, of course. But after the first few moral objectors met a quick end in the desert, it didn’t take long for the other racers to quickly see the writing on the wall: embrace AG, or suffer the consequences.

As someone who’d grown up using AG his entire life, Wes should’ve been a no-brainer for first place.

At the very least, he should’ve reached the finish line.

Listening carefully for the drone, I hoist myself up and climb the bridge’s trusses until I reach the glittering bricks that line the road on top. I crouch low, out of sight. But down the road, at the highest point of the bridge, I can see the source of the buzzing I was so worried about. I can hear it, too:

“It’s going to be a beautiful day in New Palisades!” the cylindrical streetsweeper bot announces cheerfully to no one. Its brushes spin furiously as the silver machine polishes the road to perfection, preparing the avenue for the coming dawn, when dayworkers from the Boundary will come flooding into our city.

That’s the whirring I heard— not a cop, but a custodian.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day in New Palisades!” the bot repeats again. I don’t necessarily disagree— every day is beautiful here— but I need to make sure the bot doesn’t spot me, or Mrs. Belmont will be notified. She never checks my livestreams, since she’s too busy as head of New Palisades’s largest security and surveillance corporation for that type of ‘frivolous entertainment’, as she calls it. But a surveillance cam detecting me so close to the city’s border would absolutely trigger her emergency alerts.

The Belmonts don’t want me anywhere near the Boundary. They even had my name added to the “Entry Not Permitted” list at the Boundary’s security checkpoint. I don’t blame them; in their mind, a Bounder brutally killed their only child, with no one but the punishing desert sun to witness the crime. Thanks to AG-Wes, though, I know my Wes is still out there— I can feel him, the same way I can feel the Veil’s power coursing into my palms. And the only person with answers lives in the Boundary, so that’s where I’m going.

Crouching low, I peer east, to the city’s border, and the automated security checkpoint waiting there. As long as the computer at that checkpoint is working properly, I’m a bird in a cage, trapped without my mate.

But when it’s not working properly?

One of my followers has an aunt who works in New Palisades’ holographic systems department. When I announced my new livestream challenge, he tipped me off that there’s another system-wide update tonight, where the AG capabilities of every machine in New Palisades, including the Veil itself, will be enhanced. It’s such a massive upgrade that they can’t run the old version and the new version back to back on every server. For three glorious blink-and-you’ll-miss-em seconds, the whole system will be down. Every computer in the city.

I just have to be at the checkpoint when it happens.

AmberEnchantress99: seven minutes jade!

Shit. I lost time with that magni-grip fumble, time I’d planned to spend weaving through the city’s less-monitored back alleys. Seven minutes is barely enough time to go straight down the avenue to the checkpoint, but there’s no way I’ll make it that far undetected. I need a disguise that lets me hide in plain sight.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day in New Palisades!”

My eyes flick up to the streetsweeper bot, then to the trash can beside me. The silver, cylindrical trash can, that I could probably crouch underneath if I flipped it over.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day in New Palisades!”

Yes. Yes it is.

                                  ❖

SunriseGarden32[AG]: screamiiiiing this is so cool

I chuckle softly, the sound muffled by the trash can’s metal as I tiptoe down the avenue, occasionally brushing against the curbs for good measure. “I do it for you, Sunrise Garden.” Like clockwork, as soon as I call out Sunrise Garden by name, a dozen more nearly-identical compliments flood my screen. Human nature, as reliable as the Veil’s advertisements cycling every hour, on the hour. Everyone wants to feel special.

I look past the lines and lines of scrolling messages, through the trash can’s metal grating. At last, I’m finally face to face with the checkpoint screen, the only thing standing between me and finding out what happened to the love of my life.

Thirty seconds left.

Overhead, the swirling galaxies of Van Gogh’s Starry Night glide across the Veil, behind a graphic promoting the music hall’s latest Holo-Concert: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong Perform Their Greatest Hits… as Babies! The seconds tick down in my head, as the biometric scanner on the checkpoint screen sweeps from left to right, waiting for input. My thighs quiver, but I don’t dare stand or remove the trashcan until the update starts. The checkpoint doors are programmed to deadbolt if someone on the “Entry Not Permitted” list is detected. With my luck, that deadbolt would last even if the rest of the system is temporarily down. I guess we’re about to find out.

Bracing my hands against the sides of the trashcan, I whisper. “Chat, as a reminder, my livestream of the Boundary is for premium subscribers only. I’ll be switching over momentarily. I hope you do too; I’d hate for you to miss anything!”

Three.

Two.

One.

I launch the trashcan off of my body and stand, just as the entire world around me flickers out of existence, replaced by the same ugly grit I see on the other side of the bars. This is how it used to be, the old folks say, before the Veil saved us from ourselves. Gone are my city’s glittering bricks and wrought silver railings. Where frescoes and marble wall fountains used to be, I see charred brick ruins and jutting rebar, bent at unnatural angles. I don’t dare look up at the Veil.

For three never-ending seconds, New Palisades and the Boundary are the same.

I can’t stand it.

The biometric scanner hits my eyes. A gray ring on the screen spins as the system tries, unsuccessfully, to reach the database. Then there’s a soft click from the checkpoint lock, and the door swings lightly on its hinge. I push it open and step across the threshold, into the next part of my plan.

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