“That’s what it should look like. You’ll know.”
Pru shut her eyes and, feeling faintly ridiculous, wished as hard as she could. She needed a shower. She needed sleep. She needed to soothe the anxiety rollicking about in her gut. And she needed to quit replaying the moment she’d run into Alexandre Lamarque instead of Anabel in that godforsaken library study.
A few seconds later, she cracked open one eye. “It’s not working.”
“Are you focused on Project Rebelwing?” asked Bishop.
“Obviously,” hissed Pru through grinding teeth.
“You look as though your head might explode,” observed Jay Park. “Maybe you should—”
“Maybe everyone should shut up and let me concentrate!” Pru shut both eyes again, and tried to unclench her jaw.
“It’s still not working,” said Bishop. Even with her eyes closed, Pru could picture the downturned cast of his mouth. “Perhaps Cat was mistaken. Perhaps we all were. It’s been a long night and longer morning. We ought to let the girl go home to her mother.”
“Pru.” Someone’s hand landed on her shoulder, a bit stiffly placed, but long-fingered and warm. “What did it feel like, piloting her?” asked Alex.
Such a simple question, but how to answer it? How did you articulate the wingspan of your arms, the expanse of the city rendered sharp and strange, the freedom, holy crap, the freedom of it. Tears, ridiculously, pricked at the corners of her eyes. She felt so stupid—so tired, and confused, and overwhelmed by the past twenty-four hours of her life—but when Alex asked how piloting felt, all she wanted to do was cry for the joy of it.
Or maybe that was just the all-nighter’s toll kicking in. It could go either way at this point, really.
Heels of her hands over streaming eyes, Pru saw it, then: the scrape of metal along concrete. She blinked, feet rooted, but some part of her mind sped along, coasting down—no, up, up the side of a building, twisting through sunlight, and landing—
She heard the shouts of the others, before she opened her eyes, but she already knew what she’d see. When she lifted her head, the dragon was still half-invisible, silver chrome creeping steadily over translucent edges as the mech uncloaked itself. Pru stumbled forward, pulse in her throat, waiting for the mech to flee, like before. To disappear. To reject her.
Her forehead met cool metal. Eyes slitted against that bright reptilian scrutiny, Pru’s hands rose to cradle the shape of that carefully rendered snout, the slide of winking scales. Like magic. Like Mama’s fairytales made real after all, even now at seventeen, on the grim brink of adulthood.
Then, for the second time in as many days, Pru fainted dead away.
* * *
Idol Gaze: Celebrities & Lifestyle
“The New Political Cool: Meet the Fresh-Faced People’s Heroes of the Barricade Coalition”
by Joseph Glazer
No, they’re not film stars, though thanks to their work, the film industry continues to thrive—at least, legally speaking, behind Barricade walls. Nevertheless, veterans of the Partition Wars like Head Representative Gabriel Lamarque and his famously hand-picked cohort have achieved a level of mystique and allure more commonly ascribed to entertainers and Internet personalities than stodgy politico types. Popular think pieces have famously chalked up the newfound sexiness of Coalition leaders to their relative youth—Lamarque himself was barely twenty at the height of the Partition Wars, and retains a certain youthful swagger even now in his forties.
The sheer number of fresh-faced teens and twentysomethings that came of age—and made their careers—in the Partition Wars has undoubtedly created a new normal for politics and government. That said, not everyone thinks younger is better. Columnist Emilia Rosenbaum wrote in a fiery Barricader’s Daily editorial last year, “The charismatically youthful appeal of the Lamarque branding has ensnared a generation of impressionable youths more entranced by the glitz and glamor of Gabriel Lamarque and his entourage than the actual grit of serious politics. The so-called ‘new cool’ of the Lamarque brand boasts an in-your-face style, but questionable substance. His government’s youth-targeted internship program, for example, risks luring adolescents and twentysomethings into a complex world of dangerous intrigue that they are ill-equipped to handle.”
Others, however, argue that the Head Representative’s “new cool” brand of continental politics, buoyed by the ambitious wunderkinds throwing themselves behind his movement, is the very thing that’s kept the Barricade Coalition standing in the face of the United Continental Confederacy’s sheer corporate firepower. “The UCC has the numbers on their side,” says Tamika Gonzales, a former Coalition intern, now a documentary filmmaker. “The folks pulling the strings at the top of the Incorporated ladder have more money, more guns, and more land. We were totally outgunned and outmanned during the Partition Wars. But we built a space for the Barricade cities off the people’s desire for a place to come as you are—to exist free of shackles on speech, expression, or identity. And the people who fought for those cities, the ones running the Coalition now—people like Gabriel Lamarque—were pretty much kids when they first took a stand in the war, you know? Sometimes, I think we forget how young everyone was back then. How much we had to lose.”
The Partition Wars may be over, but the fate of the Barricade Coalition remains as uncertain as any emergent power surrounded by hostile neighbors. Will Lamarque’s new cool continue to see his young, democratic government through increasing political and military pressure to Incorporate? Only time—and the will of the next generation—can tell.
* * *
“SO, NO MORE GRAND theft lizard incidents?” asked Anabel around a mouthful of Korean black bean noodles.
“Ha ha,” said Pru. “No, whatever new sleep mode algorithm Cat foisted on her giant metal experiment seems to be working. No mechanical dragons interrupting bio lab or trying to break into the dorms to spirit me off. Rebelwing won’t touch me, and I won’t touch her.”
“Until your mother agrees to sign the permission forms.”
“Yeah, about that.” Pru poked at the peanuts in her sticky rice with one metal chopstick. She hated peanuts. “I kinda sorta haven’t told her yet.”
Anabel leaned across the lunch table, pitching her voice low. “Well, when are you going to?”
“I don’t know. It’s not really the sort of conversation you have over the phone, you know?”
“You’ll have to tell her some time. We’re supposed to meet with Head Representative Lamarque after school today to deliver the paperwork.”