2
BROADCAST REVOLUTION
Pru thudded into consciousness with a bang of her knee against a desk leg. “Shit! Ow!”
“Jesus Christ, Wu, did you space the hell out, or what?”
Pru stirred again at the sound of her name, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The speaker’s words, tap-dancing unpleasantly across her eardrums, cleaved straight through her skull, along with the piecemeal memories of the past two hours. Had it only been two hours since the beginning of this whole disastrous drop-off? She cracked an eyelid at the phone still clutched in her hand. 4:30 P.M. Well, close enough.
“Are we still on lockdown?” she asked the cushion of her arms. Blinking her other eye open, she sat up. The bare bones furnishings of a West Library private study blinked back at her. “Is my alibi blown?”
“One, yes. Two, no, because I covered your ass by saying you were in the bathroom during lockdown room checks. I didn’t expect you to make it back to campus on your own without getting caught, and I definitely didn’t expect to walk in on you snoozing. What have you been doing?”
“What does it look like? Having some weird-ass dreams.” Pru scowled at the other chair’s occupant. Sprawled between its armrests was the prettiest girl at New Columbia Prep, and the only other Asian kid in Pru’s grade, which was probably how Pru had wound up friends with someone like Anabel Park at all. Some middle-class author’s kid might not share much common ground with the youngest granddaughter to the late Brigadier General Cornelius Park, but at least they both recognized the importance of a buddy who’d loan you her spare pair of collapsible tin chopsticks at lunchtime. Pru, who spent weekend visits home buying cheap-ass knock-off pairs from the bodega under Mama’s apartment, kept splintering hers on half-frozen dumplings. Anabel, who grew up with a nose for discretion, teased about a lot of things, but never that. It pretty much solidified their friendship.
Also, there was the whole illegal media smuggling thing.
“Dreams?” Anabel’s perfectly lined eyes curved up at the edges. “About what, exams? This might be news to you, Pru-Wu, but this is New Columbia Prep. We’ve all had that one.”
“No,” said Pru. “Dragons.”
“You mean wyverns.”
“No,” repeated Pru, feeling oddly insistent. “Dragons.”
“Dragons.”
“I think.”
Anabel’s expression shuttered for a moment, eyes narrowing just a fraction. Then she laughed. “Look, I don’t say this to a lot of people who aren’t me, but you gotta sleep more, girl.” She sobered. “About that. I wanted to apologize.”
“For what?”
Anabel’s gaze flicked nervously past Pru’s shoulder, before meeting Pru’s again. “You know, the whole drop-off deal. My fault for double-booking five thirty-two—that’ll teach me to overschedule myself for the week, huh?” She leaned in slightly, and lowered her voice. “Seriously, though, what possessed you to go out into Incorporated territory alone to make the drop?”
Pru shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. The guards at the walls swallowed the whole wide-eyed preppie act, hook, line, and sinker. ‘Oh no, sir, please let me through, I’m just a lowly intern here on Head Representative Lamarque’s diplomatic detail, and I really need an A in Modern Politics II to keep my scholarship—’”
“Pru!” said Anabel, aghast.
“What? Like we haven’t pulled that act before.”
“Yeah, but as a pair, you know? You’re not even enrolled in Modern Politics II. What possessed you to go out there without anyone to watch your back? Masterson might have bitched and moaned about not getting his goods in time, but he would have paid up, eventually, lockdown bonus and all.”
Red and blue siren screams flickered across Pru’s mind. “You mean before or after he sicced Incorporated police enforcers on my ass?”
Anabel’s jaw locked. “That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t funny to me either,” said Pru. “I’ve skipped, like, half my phys ed electives since August. My cardio is way too shitty to go on the lam from the UCC without fair warning.”
“He really sold you out?”
“Apparently, crackdowns on black market media are all the rage this week, and they’ve got the bribes to show for it. More luck, me.”
“Jesus.” Anabel sucked on her teeth. Her fingers clenched and unclenched the pleats of her uniform skirt. “I could straight up murder Dick Masterson. How are you napping in the library, and not stuck in some Incorporated gulag right now?”
“Oh my god, you watch way too many old wartime soaps. UCC wouldn’t have stuck me in a gulag; they’d have put me in a crummy jail cell with some small-time pot dealers, and caused a nice diplomatic incident by calling up the nearest Barricader rep to yell about my violation of decency protocols or something.” Probably. At best.
“Then why aren’t breaking news headlines full of clickbait about the Head Representative bailing you out of Incorporated custody?”
Pru shrugged. “Run pretty fast, after all. Last phys ed core class must have stuck.”
“Pru.”
“Look, I don’t remember exactly, okay?” Pru scrubbed her nails across the back of her head, mussing her ponytail. Irritation, anxious and ugly, itched beneath her skin. “It’s not a big deal. Police brigades gave chase. I ran. Found some sketchy pachinko parlor where I hid out for a bit, and then . . .”
And then what? The blank space yawned inside Pru’s head, curled around that unsettling dream of reptilian eyes, like two burning silver coins in its metal skull. “I don’t know,” she barreled on. If words tripped off your tongue fast enough, all slurred together like they didn’t mean anything, you could almost convince yourself that nothing you talked about bothered you. “I guess evasive tactics took over my muscle memory. Anyway, what does it matter? I found my way back before our allotted time in the study was up, didn’t I?”
Anabel’s head canted sideways. She didn’t look skeptical so much as strangely calculating. “How’d you get past the Barricade sentinels?”
The metallic wink of scales flashed across Pru’s mind. She tucked her chin, pulling a face. She wasn’t crazy. She’d had too much coffee, escaped the long arm of Incorporated law, and given herself some truly weird stress dreams in the aftermath. It wasn’t anything to worry about.
“I think I must have stowed away on one of the transport mechs between UCC and Barricader territory,” she said slowly. It would explain why she’d have dreamed about flying. “There are more than usual, what with all the suits from both sides of the Barricades running back and forth to yell at each other about this wyvern bullshit. And we’ve hopped free rides on the transport mechs before, yeah?”