“Or securing jobs for after university!”
“Or learning to pilot giant dragon mechs.”
Anabel’s mouth curved. “Or that,” she admitted, low-voiced. “You ready for next period?”
“Does it matter?”
“Come on, don’t be like that,” chided Anabel. “Most kids doing community service for black market media smuggling would probably be stuck, like, picking up trash on the beach after one of those big gaudy No Man’s Land parties, or cleaning public toilets or something—”
“Gross!”
“—so you could at least pretend to be passably excited about getting to ride around in the cockpit of a sentient, state-of-the-art war mech for yours.”
“I’m not—” Not what? Pru hesitated. The notion of what she was really doing, sounded out in actual words, was batshit crazy if you lingered on it too long. “Why yes,” she imagined explaining during a university admissions interview, “I’m test-piloting Project Rebelwing, a sentient mobile suit prototype literally shaped like a fairytale dragon, which also happens to be the Barricade Coalition’s best line of defense against the cybernetic monsters cooked up by the fear-mongering, arms-dealing megacorporation trying its level best to stamp out democracy!”
“A work-study internship for Modern Politics II” just sounded so much cleaner.
“I’m not ungrateful,” Pru said, as they started down the hall toward the off-campus trains. “Alex asked me if the imprint was so bad, that day Mama signed off on all the paperwork. I told him it wasn’t. And it’s not. It’s—”
Exhilarating. Terrifying.
“Scary, but kind of neat,” said Pru.
“Oh, Alex asked.” Anabel bumped her shoulder against Pru’s.
“Why are you saying his name like that?”
“Like what?”
Pru rolled her eyes. “Never mind.” She was halfway down the platform escalator when Anabel caught her elbow. “He talks about you, you know,” said Anabel. “Alex, I mean.”
This both was and wasn’t a conversation Pru wanted to be having twenty minutes before she was due in a training yard with a giant metal dragon. Gently, she shrugged Anabel’s fingers off her jacket sleeve. “Uh huh.”
“I’m serious.” Anabel’s nose wrinkled, as she pitched her voice low, into an approximation of Alex’s. “He’s all, ‘Pru said this, Pru said that, oh Anabel, why is she like this?’ I told him if you’re getting under his skin that badly, he should tell you, not me.”
“I know I annoy Alex,” said Pru, stepping onto the metro platform toward the Head Representative’s Mansion. “Which is valid, since he annoys me too. You don’t have to rub it in.”
Following suit, Anabel exhaled, sharp and blustery, the way she did when something annoyed her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Pru-Wu, but you’re maybe the second dumbest smart kid I know.”
“Gee, thanks.” A horrible possibility occurred to Pru. Glancing toward Anabel’s pinched, narrow-eyed expression, Pru gathered all the Good Friend Wiles she had, and said, “Just because he and I don’t get on doesn’t mean you can’t . . . like him.” It even made a certain kind of sense, Anabel liking Alex. They were cut from the same cloth, both of them all sharp-boned elegance brimming with passion: young scions of old, important Barricader families that practically pissed liberty. Pru wondered why she hadn’t considered the pairing before.
Anabel shot her a funny look. “Of course I can like him,” she said. Then, like a stone sinking into the pit of Pru’s belly: “And I do. I always have, ever since we were children.”
Well. Like she’d told herself two seconds ago. That made sense. Pru twitched her shoulders, as if shrugging off a sudden, invisible weight, and pretended to be super interested in the train that came rumbling up to the platform. “Come on,” she told Anabel, rough voiced, stepping through the sliding doors, “a giant mechanical dragon awaits us. Put on your excited face.”
* * *
Barricading Beat: Your Number One Source for Citizen Journalism!
Posted by 1amARQu3 FAN
An anonymous tip suggests that this year’s round of No Man’s Land parties—the infamous beachside extravaganzas for the glamorous and wealthy from both sides of the Barricades—will see a series of new product exhibitions by some of UCC Inc.’s most notorious entrepreneurs, sure to shock and awe! What are your predictions for the guest list, and what sort of mechanical marvels and monstrosities might appear on display? Discuss in comments!!!
* * *
THE “TRAINING YARD,” AS twinkling-eyed Gabriel Lamarque had called it, was a nice euphemism for the video game–worthy military base that greeted Pru at the address he’d assigned her. It made the mech landing pad where she’d first summoned Rebelwing look like Pru’s childhood bedroom. She whistled long and low when the fine chrome door whooshed aside to admit her. “What is this, a space station?”
Chrome, the same bright silver as Rebelwing’s scales, plated the floor as far as her eyes could see, rising into convex walls that swooped a graceful arc toward the distant blue of the sky, like the inside of a moon missing its top. Slicing razor-thin angles through its center was a series of balconies boasting three-dimensional camera displays trained on the great silver floor below. It was as if an overbudgeted space opera movie set had gone and had a baby with a modern art exhibit at some avant-garde museum.
A clear glass elevator descended through the balcony levels. Jay Park, resplendent in a dove gray waistcoat, emerged flanked on either side by Cat and Alex. Self-consciously, Pru smoothed the pleats of her secondhand uniform skirt.
“Let me open by making this clear,” announced Anabel’s cousin in mournful tones. “Supervising this work-study period is technically Hakeem’s job. As Chief of Staff to the Head Representative, he’s responsible for the care and handling of our military resources, not least of which includes Project Rebelwing. However, out of the goodness of my heart, I have volunteered—”
“Voluntold,” said Cat, clipped and corrective. “He was voluntold.”
“I have volunteered,” Jay continued loudly, “to train you in the art of mowing down your enemies with a giant mechanical lizard. Should be good fun for us all, barring engine grease on my pocket squares.”
“Us?” asked Pru. Her gaze darted between Cat’s habitual scowl and the sideways set of Alex’s enigmatic smile.
Jay’s eyebrows lifted. “Us,” he confirmed. “You. Alex. Cat.”