The Receiver

3 0 - F R E E F A L L

When I check the panel of the screen displaying my and Iris's sim room, I glance over just in time to catch the twins in the middle of a secret handshake. They high-five with each hand, jump up to bounce their bare bellies off one another, then spaz out, wiggling and shaking like they're tweaking on some bottomfeeder's homegrown jolly rockets.

The boys have devoted the entire laserscreen solely to this mission, giving themselves a three hundred sixty-degree view of downcity. For their drones, they've chosen two feral-looking vultures with tapered talons made of yellow glass, beady eyes like trapped fire, and wingspans wider than both of them are tall. Tracking their every move, the simulation has fitted Bo and Bear each with giant wings shimmering with colored light that flap with the rise and fall of their skinny arms. The wings alone are so magnificent I almost don't even notice that the floor is littered with miniature, six-inch-tall holographic figurines that represent the sweepers. Blocks of them stand like dominoes. They remind me of the ones Mom would help us scavenge for by the river, spending hours on days when we were beyond bored finding the smoothest, flattest stones at the water's edge.

Curling their fingers into fists, the boys steer their mechanical beasts, swooping down into the fray, where they each grab onto a bot. In Lower, the birds lift the hunks of metal into the air like they weigh nothing and carry them over the East River, dropping them into the murky water. It's a fall they will eventually recover from, swimming back to the shoreline with swift breaststrokes, but at least it will keep them down for the count while the others are dealt with. With their arms spread-eagle, the boys run around cawing at the bots and each other, swiping their arms and wings through the bots, sending them flying across the sim room. As much as they're enjoying themselves, I know they know it's more than just a game. I can see it on their faces: in their minds, they're flying. The sight of the holographic toy robots sailing into the air is so unexpectedly hilarious it brings an involuntary gurgle of laughter out of my throat. The boys have earned dessert for dinner for at least a month in my book.

I don't have access to other uppercruster sims, but I can imagine much of them do the same with as many drones as there are whirring around in the sky. There must be at least a few thousand of the larger ones—sharks and whales and birds of prey—and thousands more little bugs bobbing and weaving between them in the air, all of them being remote-piloted by other people across the city.

Next, I check the screen in the room where the sweepers are being held. I have to squint against the darkness within the room to be sure of what I'm seeing: it's empty. Which is good. That means all the sweepers have been sent down already. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope this wasn't the first wave of many. The only people left are probably Lyath and his techies. But I do a double take when I see what looks like three Reaper suits so I tell the computer to zoom in, my eyes glued to the backside of a familiar head of red-brown hair. As soon as the woman turns she confirms what I already knew.

I've finally found Iris.

Though I can't hear what anyone's saying, it looks like she and the other girls—fellow Daughters I'm guessing—are talking to the Engineer and maybe his workers too. The conversation appears civil enough, until the girls take a few steps forward, just enough to crowd him, and then latch onto one of his limbs and start carrying him toward the lift where the bots have been funneling out all morning. Toward Lower.

Like most citizens of the upper city, Lyath has most likely never set foot on the ground before, never seen the waterline cut like a slimy scar across the sides of the buildings, never seen any of the destruction up-close.

As the room's population goes down by a third, only a few techs are left behind. I keep my eyes on the screen, thinking maybe without their fearless leader present, they'll give up the fight or at least loosen the controls a little, but the longer I watch them the more it seems that notion is too optimistic. Their heads are still bowed over their tablets, their fingers flying as they write their codes and I have no idea what they might be telling the sweepers to do.