cinder || dnf

chapter two

The emergency sirens hadn't faded before the hum of another engine rumbled into the square. The market's silence was split by feet thumping on the pavement and then someone spitting commands. Someone else's guttural response.

Slinging his messenger bag across his back, Dream crept across the dusty floor of his booth and pushed past the tablecloth that draped his work desk. He slipped his fingers into the gap of light beneath the door and inched it open. Pressing his cheek to the warm gritty pavement, he was able to make out three sets of yellow boots across the square. An emergency crew. He peeled the door open farther and watched the men- all wearing gas masks- as they doused the interior of the booth with liquid from a yellow can. Even across the square, Dream wrinkled his nose at the stench.

"What's happening?" Patches asked from behind him.

"They're going to burn Sacha's booth." Dream's eyes swept along the square, noting the pristine white hover planted near the corner. Other than the three men, the square was abandoned. Rolling in his back, Dream peered up into Patches' sensor, still glowing faintly in the dark. "We'll leave when the flames start, when they're distracted."

"Are we in trouble?"

"No. I just can't be bothered with a trip to the quarantines today."

One of the men spouted an order, followed by shuffling feet. Dream turned his head and squinted through the gap. A flame was thrown into the booth. The smell of gasoline was soon met with that of burned toast. The men stood back, their uniforms silhouetted against the growing flames.

Reaching up, Dream grabbed Prince George's android around its neck and pulled it down beside him. Tucking it under one arm, he slid the door open enough to crawl through, keeping his eyes on the men's backs. Patches followed, scooting against the next booth as Dream lowered the door. They darted along the storefronts- most left wide open during the mass exodus- and turned into the first skinny alley between shops. Black smoke blotted the sky above them. Seconds later, a horde of news hovers buzzed over the buildings on their way to the market square.

Dream slowed when they'd put enough distance between them and the market, emerging from the maze of alleys. The sun had passed overhead and was descending behind the skyscrapers to the west. The air sweated with August heat, but an occasional warm breeze was funneled between the buildings, picking up whirlwinds of garbage from the gutters. Four blocks from the market, signs of life appeared again on the streets- pedestrians pooling on the sidewalks and gossiping about the plague outbreak in the city center. Netscreens implanted into building walls showed live feeds of fire and smoke in downtown New Beijing and panicked headlines in which the toll of infected mounted by the second- even though only one person had been confirmed sick so far as Dream could tell.

"All those sticky buns," Patches said as they passed a close-up shot of the blackened booth.

Dream bit the inside corner of his cheek. Neither of them had ever sampled the acclaimed sweets of the market bakery. Patches didn't have taste buds, and Chang Sacha didn't serve cyborgs.

Towering offices and shopping centers gradually melded with a messy assortment of apartment buildings, built so close that they became an unending stretch of glass and concrete. Apartments in this corner of the city had once been spacious and desirable but had been so subdivided and remodeled over time- always trying to cram more people into the same square footage- that the buildings had become labyrinths of corridors and stairwells.

But all the crowded ugliness was briefly forgotten as Dream turned the corner onto his own street. For half a step, New Beijing Palace could be glimpsed between complexes, sprawling and serene on the cliff that overlooked the city. The palace's pointed gold roofs sparkled orange beneath the sun, the windows glinting the light back at the city. The ornate gables, the tiered pavilions that teetered dangerously close to the cliff's edge, the rounded temples stretching to the heavens. Dream paused longer than usual to look up at it, thinking about someone who lived beyond those walls, who was up there perhaps this very second.