The Dazzling Heights

“Everything okay in here?” Did she hear a note of suspicion in her dad’s voice, or was she imagining it?

“What’s going on, Dad?” Typical Atlas, answering a question with a question. But it was a good deflective technique.

“I just heard back from Jean-Pierre LaClos, in the Paris office,” Avery’s dad said slowly. “It looks like the French might finally let us build something next to that antique eyesore of theirs.” His form was just visible through the slats of the closet door. Avery stayed utterly still, pressing back into a gray wool coat, her arms crossed over her chest. Her heart was pounding so erratically she felt certain her dad would hear it.

Atlas’s closet was much smaller than hers. There was nowhere to hide, if Pierson came to open the door. There was no possible explanation for why she would be here, wearing a bra and pajama shorts in Atlas’s room, except, of course, for the real reason.

Out there in the bedroom, her pink shirt lay on the floor like a glaring searchlight.

“Okay,” Atlas replied, and Avery heard the unspoken query. Why was their dad coming over in the middle of the night, for something that didn’t sound particularly urgent?

After what was surely too long a silence, Pierson cleared his throat. “You’ll have to come early to the development meeting tomorrow. We’re going to need to do a full analysis of their streets and waterways, to start prepping.”

“I’ll be there,” Atlas said tersely. He was standing directly on top of the shirt, trying to discreetly cover it with one of his feet. Avery willed her dad not to notice the movement.

“Sounds good.” A moment later Avery heard the door to her brother’s room click shut.

She leaned back and slid helplessly down the wall to a seated position. It felt like tiny needles were prickling all over her skin, like that time she’d been vitamin-checked at the doctor, except laced with adrenaline. She felt restless and reckless and strangely exhilarated, as if she’d tripped into quicksand and somehow emerged on the other side unharmed.

Atlas flung open the closet. “You okay, Aves?”

The closet lights turned on as he opened the doors; but for an impossibly brief instant, Avery was in the dark while Atlas seemed illuminated from behind—light streaming around him, gilding the edges of his form, making him seem almost otherworldly. It seemed suddenly impossible that he was real, and here, and hers.

And in truth, it was impossible. Everything about their relationship kept proving impossible at every turn, yet somehow they had willed it into being.

“I’m fine.” She stood up to run her hands up his arms, settling them finally on his shoulders, but he took a reflexive step back and reached for her top, which still lay there on the ground.

“That was not good, Aves.” Atlas held out the shirt, his features creased with worry.

“He didn’t see me,” Avery argued, but she knew that wasn’t the point. Neither of them mentioned what their dad might have already seen: Avery’s bedroom, on the other side of the apartment, her pristine white bedcovers rumpled but decidedly empty.

“We need to be more careful.” Atlas sounded resigned.

Avery pulled her shirt over her head and looked up at him, her chest constricting at what he wasn’t saying. “There’s no more sleeping over, is there?” she asked, though she already knew the answer. They couldn’t risk it, not anymore.

“No. Aves, you need to go.”

“I will. Starting tomorrow,” she promised, and pulled his mouth to hers. Now more than ever Avery knew how dangerous it was, but that just made each moment with Atlas infinitely more precious. She knew the risks. She knew they were walking a tightrope; that it would be so, so easy to fall.

If this was their last night sleeping over, then she was going to make it count.

She wished she could tell him everything, but instead she willed it all into her kisses: all the silent apologies, the confessions, the promises to love him forever. If she couldn’t tell him aloud, there was no other way to tell him than this.

Clutching Atlas by the shoulders, she yanked him forward, and he followed her into the closet as the overhead light clicked back off.

WATT

WATZAHN BAKRADI LEANED back in the stiff auditorium chair, studying the chessboard currently displayed over his field of vision. Move rook three spaces on the left diagonal. The chessboard, projected in ghostly white and black onto the high-res contacts he constantly wore, changed accordingly.

That wasn’t a wise move, pointed out Nadia, the quantum computer embedded in Watt’s brain. Her knight immediately swooped forward to capture his king.

Watt stifled a groan, eliciting a few strange looks from the friends and classmates seated around him. He quickly fell silent and focused his gaze forward, to where a man in a crimson blazer stood at a podium, explaining the liberal arts offerings at Stringer West University. Watt tuned him out, just like he’d done all the other speakers at this mandatory assembly for the junior class. As if Watt had any intention of taking a history or English class again after high school was over.

You’ve been losing to me on average eleven minutes more quickly than normal. I believe it’s a sign of distraction, Nadia added, flashing the words over his contacts like an incoming flicker.

You think? Watt thought testily. Watt had good reason to be distracted lately. He’d taken what seemed like an easy hacking job for a highlier girl named Leda, only to fall for her best friend, Avery. Until he’d learned that Avery was actually in love with Atlas, the very same person Leda had hired him to spy on. Then he’d accidentally delivered that secret straight to Leda, who was vicious and high and out for revenge. An innocent girl had ended up dying because of it. And Watt had just stood there and let it happen, let Leda walk away scot-free—because Leda knew about Nadia.

Watt wasn’t sure how she’d figured it out, but somehow, she’d learned Watt’s most dangerous secret. Anytime she wanted, Leda could turn Watt in for possession of an illegal quantum computer. Nadia, of course, would be destroyed forever. As for Watt, he’d go to jail for life. If he was lucky.

“Watt!” Nadia hissed, sending a zap of electric shock down his system. The Stringer representative was stepping down from the podium, replaced by a woman with shoulder-length chestnut hair and a serious expression. Vivian Marsh, the head of admissions at MIT.

“Few of you will apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even fewer of you have the grades to get in,” she said without preamble. “But for those of you who do, you’ll find that our program rests upon three tenets: explore, experience, evolve.”

Watt heard a soft pattering of fingers on tablets. He glanced around; some of the kids from his advanced math classes were typing furiously, hanging on Vivian’s every word. His friend Cynthia—a pretty Japanese American girl who’d been in Watt’s classes since practically kindergarten—was on the edge of her seat, her eyes lit up. Watt hadn’t even known Cynthia was interested in MIT. Would he have to compete against her for the limited spots?

Watt hadn’t really considered what he would do if he didn’t get into MIT. For years he had dreamed of attending their extremely competitive microsystems engineering program. It was the research team in that very department that had invented the millichip, and entanglement software, and the room-temperature supermagnets that prevented quantum decoherence.

Watt had always assumed he would get in. Hell, he’d invented a quantum computer on his own at age fourteen; how could they not take him?

Except that he couldn’t exactly talk about Nadia on his application. And as he looked around at the other students, Watt was forced to confront the very real possibility that he might not get in after all.

Should I ask a question? he thought anxiously to Nadia. Something, anything to get Vivian to notice him.

“This isn’t a Q and A, Watt,” Nadia observed.

Suddenly, far too quickly, the Stanford rep was stepping up and clearing his throat.

Without thinking, Watt shot to his feet, cursing as he stumbled down the row of seats. Seriously? Cynthia mouthed as he climbed over her, but Watt didn’t care; he needed to talk to Vivian, and anyway, Stanford was at best his safety school.

He burst out the double doors at the back of the auditorium, ignoring the eyes that turned accusatorily toward him as he did, and began sprinting around the corner to the school exit.

“Ms. Marsh! Wait!”

She paused, one hand on the door, an eyebrow raised. Well, at the very least he would be memorable.

“I have to say, it’s rare that I’m chased out of a school auditorium. I’m not a celebrity, you know.” Watt thought he heard an edge of wry amusement behind her tone, but couldn’t be sure.

“I’ve been dreaming of going to MIT ever since I can remember, and I just … I really wanted to speak with you.” Your name! Nadia prompted. “Watzahn Bakradi,” he said quickly, holding out a hand. After a moment, Vivian shook it.

“Watzahn Bakradi,” she repeated, her gaze turned inward, and Watt realized she was doing some kind of search of him, through her contacts. She blinked and focused on him again. “I see that you participated in our Young Engineers’ Summer Program, on scholarship. And you weren’t invited back.”

Watt flinched. He knew exactly why he hadn’t been asked to return—because one of his professors had caught him building an illegal quantum computer. She’d promised not to alert the police, but still, the mistake had cost him.

Nadia had pulled Vivian’s CV onto his contacts, but it wasn’t helpful; all it told Watt was that she’d grown up in Ohio and had studied psychology as an undergraduate.

He realized that he needed to answer her. “That program was four years ago. I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’d like the chance to prove it to you.”

Vivian tilted her head, accepting a ping. “I’m speaking with a student,” she said to whoever it was, probably an assistant. “I know, I know. Just one moment.” As she tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, Watt caught a glimpse of an expensive platinum wrist computer. He wondered, suddenly, what she really thought of coming down to speak on the 240th floor, even if it was at a magnet school. No wonder she was in a hurry to leave.

“Mr. Bakradi, why is MIT your top choice?”

Nadia had pulled up the MIT guidelines and mission statement, but Watt didn’t want to give a safe, canned answer. “Microsystems engineering. I want to work with quants,” he said boldly.

“Really.” She looked him up and down, and Watt could tell her interest was piqued. “You know that program receives thousands of applications, but only selects two students per year.”

“I know. It’s still my top choice.” It’s my only choice, Watt thought, giving his best smile, the one he always used on girls when he and Derrick went out. He felt her softening toward him.

“Have you ever seen a quant? Do you know how unbelievably powerful they are?”

An untruth would be optimal here, Nadia told him, but Watt knew he could dance around the question.

“I know there are only a few left,” he said instead. There were quants at NASA, of course, and the Pentagon; though Watt had a feeling there were far more illegal and unregistered quants—like Nadia—than the government would care to admit. “However, I think there should be more. There are so many places we need quantum computers.”

Like in your brain? Watt, be sensible, Nadia urged, but he wasn’t listening. “We need them now more than ever. We could revolutionize global farming to eradicate poverty, we could eliminate fatal accidents, we could terraform Mars—”

Watt’s voice rang overly loud in his ears. He realized that Vivian was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and he fell silent.

“You sound eerily like the science-fiction writers of the last century. I’m afraid that your opinion is no longer popular these days, Mr. Bakradi,” she said at last.

Watt swallowed. “I just think the AI Incident of 2093 could have been avoided. The quant in question wasn’t responsible. The security hadn’t been properly set, there was an issue with his core programming …”

Back when quants were still legal, they’d all been given the same piece of fundamental core programming: that the quant could take no action to harm a human being, no matter what later commands were given to it.

“His?” Vivian repeated, and Watt realized belatedly that he’d used a gendered pronoun to describe a computer. He said nothing. After a moment, she sighed. “Well, I have to say, I look forward to personally reviewing your application.”

She stepped through the door and into a waiting hover.

Nadia, what on earth do we do now? he thought, hoping she might have a brilliant solution. She usually picked up on situational details that he had missed.

There’s only one thing you can do, Nadia replied, and that is to write the best damn essay Vivian Marsh has ever seen.

“There you are,” Cynthia breathed, when Watt finally made his way to their locker. Technically, it was Cynthia’s locker: Watt had been assigned one, but it was at the end of the arts hallway, and since he never went that direction, and never carried much stuff anyway, he’d gotten in the habit of using Cynthia’s instead. Derrick, Watt’s best friend, stood there too, worry creasing his forehead.

“Yeah, what happened? Cynthia says you skipped out early?”

“I went to try to talk to the MIT admissions officer, before she left.”

“What did you tell her?” Cynthia asked, while Derrick shook his head, muttering something that sounded like “Should’ve thought of that.”

Watt sighed. “I’m not sure it went well.”

Cynthia glanced at Watt in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, at least if I tank, it’ll increase your chances of getting in,” Watt replied, a little too flippant; but sarcasm had always been his defense mechanism.

Cynthia seemed hurt. “I would never think like that. Honestly, I was hoping that we would both end up at MIT. It could be nice, having a friendly face so far from home …”

“And then I’ll come visit you both, and pester you constantly!” Derrick said, throwing his arms jovially around both their shoulders.

“That would be fun,” Watt said cautiously, with a glance at Cynthia. He hadn’t realized that they shared the same dream. She was right: it would be nice—walking across the leaf-strewn campus together on their way to class, working together in the engineering lab late at night, getting lunch in that enormous arched dining hall Watt had seen on the i-Net.

Then again, what would he and Cynthia do if only one of them got in?

It’ll be fine, he told himself, but he couldn’t help thinking that this was just one more thing in his life that could end in disaster.

He seemed to be collecting a lot of those lately.

RYLIN

THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Rylin Myers leaned forward on the checkout scanner, counting down the minutes till her shift at ArrowKid was over. She knew she was lucky to have this job—it paid more than her old one at the monorail, and the hours were better—but every moment here still felt like utter torture.

ArrowKid was a mass retailer of children’s clothing in the mid-Manhattan Mall, up on the 500th floor. Until recently, Rylin had never set foot in a store like this. Arrow was the kind of place where midTower parents came in packs: wearing brightly colored exercise pants and dragging toddlers by the arm, strollers bobbing through the air alongside them, pulled by invisible magnetic tethers.

Rylin glanced around the store, which was a dizzying kaleidoscope of sound and color. Jarring pop music played on high volume through the speakers. The entire space smelled overwhelmingly of ArrowKid’s sickly sweet self-cleaning cloth diapers. And crammed on every display were children’s clothes, from pastel-colored baby onesies to dresses in a girls’ size fourteen—all of it covered in arrows. Arrow-stitched baby jeans, arrow-printed T-shirts, even little blankets covered in tiny flashing arrows. It made Rylin’s eyes hurt just to look at it.

“Hey, Ry, can you help out the customer in fitting room twelve? I’ll man checkout for a while.” Rylin’s manager, a twentysomething named Aliah, sauntered over and flipped her close-cut dark hair. There was a bright purple arrow on her shirt, spinning slowly like the hands of a clock. Rylin had to look away to keep from feeling dizzy.

“Of course,” Rylin said, trying not to be irritated that Aliah had started calling her by the nickname she reserved for close friends. She knew her manager just wanted to duck under the counter and ping her new girlfriend when she thought the employees couldn’t see.

She knocked on the door of fitting room twelve. “Just wanted to see how things were going in there,” she said loudly. “Any sizes I can grab for you?”

The door swung open to reveal a tired-looking mom perched on a stool, her eyes glazed over as she probably checked something on her contacts. A pink-cheeked girl with a smattering of freckles stood before the mirror, turning back and forth as she studied her reflection with critical intensity. She was wearing a white dress that read BE DAZZLING and was covered in tiny crystal arrows. Her feet were encased in a pair of arrow-printed boots. They already belonged to the girl; if she’d picked them up today, Rylin would have seen a subtle holographic circle marking them as a new purchase, reminding her to ring them up. She thought of the times she and her best friend, Lux, used to shoplift on the lower floors—nothing big, just a couple of tubes of perfume and paintstick, or once a box of chocolate puffs. You couldn’t get away with that up here.

“What do you think of this?” the girl asked, turning to let Rylin inspect her.

Rylin gave a watery smile. Her eyes darted to the mom—after all, she was the one who would pay—but the older woman seemed content to stay out of her daughter’s shopping habits. “It looks great,” Rylin said weakly.

“Would you wear it?” the little girl asked, her nose wrinkling adorably.

For some reason all Rylin could think of were the clothes she and Chrissa used to wear, some of which had been given by the Andertons, the upper-floor family she’d worked for as a maid. Rylin’s favorite outfit at age six had been a swashbuckling pirate costume, complete with a feathered cap and a gold-hilted sword. She realized with a start that it had probably once belonged to Cord. Or Brice. The knowledge should have made her embarrassed, yet all she felt was a strange sense of loss. She hadn’t spoken to Cord in a month—probably wouldn’t even see him ever again.

It’s for the best, she told herself, the way she always did when she thought of Cord. But it never seemed to work.

“Clearly not,” the girl huffed, pulling the dress back up over her head. “You can go,” she added pointedly, to Rylin.

Rylin realized belatedly that she’d made an error. She tried desperately to backtrack. “I’m sorry, I just lost track of my thoughts for a moment—”

“Forget it,” the girl said in a single breath, slamming the door in Rylin’s face. Moments later she and her mom were walking out of the store, leaving a pile of discarded clothes in the fitting room behind them.

“Ry.” Aliah made a disappointed clucking noise as she walked over. “That girl was an easy sale. What happened?”

Don’t Ry me, Rylin thought with a sudden burst of anger, but she knew better than to say anything; the whole reason she had this job was because of Aliah. She’d been applying for a waitress job at the café next door when she’d seen the shooting arrow display that spelled out HELP WANTED in the holographic window, and stepped inside on a whim. Aliah hadn’t even cared that she had no experience in retail. She’d taken one look at Rylin and let out an excited squeal. “You can totally fit into our junior sizes. Your hips are, like, really narrow. And your feet are even small enough for some of the sandals!”

So here Rylin was, wearing the least offensive merchandise she could find in the store—a tank top and her own black jeans, not an arrow in sight—trying halfheartedly to sell clothes to midTower kids. No wonder she sucked at it.

“I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time,” she promised.

“I hope so. You’ve been here almost a month and yet you’ve barely hit the sales minimum for a single week. I keep making excuses for you, saying it’s a learning curve, but if things don’t change soon …”

Rylin bit back a sigh. She couldn’t afford to be fired, not again. “Got it.”

Aliah’s eyes flicked as she glanced at the time in the corner of her vision. Rylin had been surprised that most girls who worked here could afford to wear contacts, even if it was just the cheaper versions. Then again, this was an after-school job for most of them; they didn’t have younger sisters to support, or a never-ending stack of bills to pay.

“Why don’t you head home, get some rest,” Aliah suggested gently. “I’ll close up. That way you can start fresh tomorrow. ’kay?”

Rylin was too exhausted to argue. “That would be amazing,” she said simply.

“And, Ry, why don’t you take one of those”—Aliah gestured toward a display near the entrance, of printed T-shirts in a bright lemon yellow, covered in purple arrows—“to wear to work tomorrow? It might help you feel a little more … enthusiastic.”

“Those are for ten-year-olds,” Rylin couldn’t help pointing out, eyeing the shirts with trepidation.

“Good thing you’re super skinny,” Aliah replied.

Rylin held her breath as she grabbed the shirt at the top of the stack. “Thanks,” she said, flashing the biggest smile she could manage, but the older girl was already on a ping, her hand to her ear as she whispered something and laughed.

When Rylin waved her ID ring over the touch pad in the door and stepped inside, the comforting smells of batter and warm chocolate rose up to meet her. She felt an immediate stab of regret that Chrissa had beat her home yet again. Ever since Rylin had started working evenings, rather than the crack-of-dawn shift she’d had at the monorail, Chrissa had been handling more of the cooking and grocery shopping. Rylin felt guilty; those had always been her jobs. She wanted to be the one taking care of her fourteen-year-old sister, not the other way around.

“How was work?” Chrissa asked cheerfully. Her eyes drifted to Rylin’s new T-shirt and she pursed her lips, suppressing a smile.

“Don’t you dare say anything, or your birthday present this year will be nothing but a huge bag of arrow-printed underwear.”

Chrissa tilted her head as if considering it. “How many arrows per pair are we talking, exactly?”

Rylin let out a laugh, then fell silent. “Honestly, at this rate, I’ll be fired long before your birthday. Turns out I’m not the best salesperson.” She came to where Chrissa stood at the cooktop, making the banana pancakes they both loved so much. “Breakfast for dinner? What’s the occasion?” she asked, and reached into the bag of chocolate flakes to grab a handful.

Chrissa batted good-naturedly at Rylin’s hand, then tossed the rest of the chocolate flakes into the mix and let the infra-powered spoon stir the batter. She looked up at her sister with evident excitement, jerking her chin toward an envelope on the table. “You got some news.”

“What is that?” No one sent real paper envelopes anymore. The last one Rylin had gotten was a medical bill; and even that was in addition to her weekly reminder pop-ups with sound, and only because the payment was a year past due.