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can cover a
mile in under five minutes.
    He doesn’t
even need to catch his breath as he stands in front of me, his cheeks flushed.
“Didn’t you get the message?” he asks. “They just issued a mandatory battery
check. You need to come back to the Tower.”
    I frown.
“What’s all the fuss about? I had mine six months ago.”
    Wes shrugs.
“So did Skip . Yet he’d still be alive if his battery hadn’t
failed.”
    I pick up
Ash and shoot to my feet. “What are you talking about? The droids killed Skip.”
    Wes shakes
his head and points to the Tower. “Let’s go. You won’t believe what they found
out.”

 
    *   *   *

 
    The news spreads quickly, yet many
refuse to believe it. Battery failure is a Mayake’s worst nightmare. We can
confront the droids. We can resist the Gaijins. But until we are be able to
make our own technology, our outdated batteries will keep failing and killing
us.
    The ground
floor of the Tower—what used to be the main lobby back when the building
was still a hospital—is packed with people. They cluster in groups, the adults animatedly talking among themselves, and
the children huddled around them, clinging to their parents with a disoriented look
on their faces.
    I snuggle
Ash to my chest, looking for familiar faces. I spot Yuri ogling at me and immediately
look away. It’s hard not to, the kid’s got a metal jaw with no skin graft to
disguise it, just raw metal sticking out of his face. He’s sixteen, one year
older than me, and even Athel says he’s a freak of nature. I squeeze through
the crowd, losing Metal Jaw Yuri in the sea of people. A moment later, he reappears
right in front of me, blocking my way.
    “What’s
that?” he says, arms crossed over his chest and chin pointing to Ash.
    “None of
your business.” I try to shoulder past him, but he keeps his stance like a
block of cement and doesn’t budge. Feeling the tension, Ash tries to wiggle
away from my clasp and digs his claws into my flesh. Metal Jaw wraps his
fingers around Ash’s neck and tries to pull him from my grasp. I bite his
forearm, making him roar in pain. He slaps me in the face, and in the commotion
Ash hops to the ground and runs away.
    “Ash!” I
scream, watching his little paws skid across the sea of shoes and prostheses.
    I push
through the adults, their loud voices ringing in my ears.
    “Ash! Come
back!”
    So many
people have gathered on the ground floor. They scold me as I force my way
through. By the end of the hallway the crowd is sparser but I can’t see Ash
anywhere. I spin on my heels, calling him. And then I hear a feeble mew.
    A man on a
crutch comes limping toward me. He holds Ash by the scruff, the poor kitten dangling
in his grasp.
    “He’s
mine! Let him go!” I say.
    The
hallway falls silent. I feel the stares of the people. What I just did is wrong.
This man is old, one of our Kiva Members. No child yells at a Kiva Member. Yet
I hold my ground, refusing to back away until I have Ash back.
    The man’s yellow
eyes scrutinize the kitten. “Does it have implants?” he asks, his voice tainted
by a sibylline lisp. He leans on his crutch and stares at the wound on Ash’s
belly, where Uli inserted the chip.
    “No!” I
yell. “He doesn’t.”
    The Mayake
people don’t yell at their elders, they don’t challenge their authority. The
Mayake people are loyal to one another. They don’t lie , they don’t disobey . Those who do are promptly
punished. Wela for the lesser crimes, Niwang for the unforgivable ones:
complete deactivation of all implants with no recharging. That’s why the Mayake
people are compliant, their obedience ingrained through decades of fear.
    Fear.
    People
tell me fear is a natural instinct, a warning for danger. Growing up, I’ve learned
to see it in others, to recognize situations that would trigger it. But I never
feel it, never experience it.
    Whether
the nanobots embedded in my cells erased it or I was born like this I don’t
know.
    So I