The Towering Sky

The truth about her and Atlas was out.

It was early afternoon: Avery must have fallen asleep, lying here atop her bedcovers, reading the hateful things people had scrawled at the bottom of that article. She’d already deleted her page on the feeds—she had to, after she saw the things people were saying there—not that it made much of a difference. They were still cramming the i-Net with all their ugly, foul comments about her.

What’s done is done, she thought sadly, and now there was no going back.

Avery became aware of a glowing icon in the corner of her vision, indicating a series of flickers that she must have missed while she was asleep. Bracing herself—what if it was her parents, or worse, Max—Avery muttered the commands that would open her inbox, only to let out a relieved breath. It was Leda.

But then she read Leda’s series of frantic flickers, and her pulse began to pound in alarm.

Hey, can you talk? I need to see you.

Avery???

Okay, I’m coming over.

Shit, your parents won’t even let me inside. What the—

OH. I saw the article. I’m so sorry.

And then, a few hours later: Just ping me when you can.

Avery forgot her own overpowering despair in her worry about her best friend. Something had happened, and Leda needed her. It felt good to be needed right now.

She ran her fingers through her hair, reached for her jacket, and paused. She was still Avery Fuller, and she might as well look it, since the world would be staring at her anyway.

Quickly, Avery traded her artech pants for a new dress and her favorite black boots. She leaned over her vanity table to program her makeup—carefully, layer by layer, letting it spray over her face like particle-sized flecks of armor.

An eerie, heavy stillness hung over the apartment as she moved down the hallway with quick steps. She considered going to check on Atlas, but decided it would be tempting fate. Instead she just sent him a flicker: I’m heading to Leda’s. How are you holding up?

On the downTower local line, Avery caught a few sidelong glances, a few surreptitious whispers aimed her way. She just kept her eyes down and shoulders up, staring at the dead space between her feet in that way New Yorkers always did. No one bothered her. She marched like that all the way to the Coles’ front door.

The streets felt hushed with expectation. Avery imagined she could hear the sound of the air itself, moving in its incessant preprogrammed patterns through the dense bulk of the Tower. It felt like a bad omen.

Leda was in her room, sitting in one of the barrel-backed chairs by her window, her eyes glazed over. That was what worried Avery most of all. Because this was Leda Cole, the girl who couldn’t sit still, the girl who was always plotting and hustling and moving. And now here she was, just staring into space.

“You okay?” Avery asked, and finally Leda turned around.

She looked terrible, Avery saw at once; her features strained, her eyes wide. She looked as if she were running on air and unshed tears.

“Oh, Avery. I’m so sorry,” Leda whispered. She hurried to her feet and threw her arms around her friend. “How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better,” Avery said mirthlessly.

“You don’t have to be brave about this, you know.”

Avery felt her throat constricting. She sank into the opposite chair. “I’m not very good at it. You’re the brave one, always trying to be so tough, to look out for everyone around you.”

“I don’t feel particularly brave right now.” Leda sighed sadly. “Avery, why didn’t you tell me that you were called in for questioning about Mariel’s death?”

It took a moment for Avery to remember the questioning. It felt as if it had happened so long ago, and yet it was only yesterday. “There were a lot of other things going on. Besides, we don’t need to worry about that; none of us had anything to do with Mariel’s death.”

Leda’s voice was very small. “Maybe I did.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Leda said helplessly. “But I might have. I might have killed her that night when I was on my bender, after we came back from Dubai. I have a whole block of time that I can’t account for. What if I killed her?”

“That’s a pretty big stretch,” Avery said dubiously. “Just because you blacked out doesn’t mean you committed murder.”

“How can you say that when you’ve already seen me kill someone?”

“You didn’t mean to kill Eris,” Avery reminded her.

“That doesn’t change the fact that it happened!” Leda stared down at her hands, picking at the polish on one of her fingers, twisting a ring back and forth. Avery knew better than to interrupt. She looked out the window, to where the sun had moved from behind a cloud, rising ever higher into the towering sky.

“I have no idea what I’m capable of,” Leda said softly. “Do you know what I was trying to forget, that day I took all those drugs and overdosed, after we got back from Dubai?”

“Probably the fact that Mariel hurt you and left you for dead.”

Leda ignored her. “It was something Mariel told me, that night in Dubai. She said that Eris was my half sister. That my dad was Eris’s dad too.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Avery felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She was reminded of the time when she was little, playing tag with Cord, and somehow she ran straight into a wall of flexiglass. Look, she’d said to Cord, through her bleeding lip. I didn’t see that coming.