Page 21 of Immortal Longings
Her colleagues who are unfortunate enough to be seated near the door scramble to their keyboards. One by one, their screens flicker to a different section of the wall around San. From what Pampi can see, peeking over her shoulder, the scene looks quiet. Leida Miliu, however, leans close to the screens, eyes narrowed like she’s searching for something else.
The colleague next to Pampi peers over their cubicle divider, cigar dangling from his mouth.
“You have any clue what they’re looking for?”
Pampi’s eyes shoot to the printer. She swipes a hand across her clicker and clears her recent activity history.
“Aren’t they always looking for something?” she asks.
“Yeah,withinthe city,” the colleague replies. He puffs on the cigar, and Pampi wrinkles her nose, brushing a hand along her pressed collar, hoping the silk won’t reek of the smell. “I hear the alarm is up for intruders trying to sneak into San-Er without citizenship.”
He says it without conviction, merely repeating what others are whispering. It’s a near impossibility, and most of San-Er is unconvinced. In all the years that the wall has been up, not once has anyone entered without permission, nor taken an illegal step in without being caught within seconds. Citizens of San-Er are either assigned an identity number at birth or granted one through immigration from the outside. Rural dwellers flock to the twin cities by the hundreds of thousands every year, especially right before the games. A handful will get citizenship; the remaining disperse to the nearest villages outside the wall, trying and trying each time the citizenship pool opens, usually to no avail.
Since Er’s palace went down, it has become San’s task to process the new immigration requests. They’re still letting people in day after day. San-Er has long been full to the brim, one uneasy exhale away from collapsing in on itself. But even among such chaos, the twin cities are inhospitable to anyone without citizenship. Its streets are filled with thieves who snatch bodies like candy, and the rich will try their hardest to make it difficult for those playing imposter. Forget jobs and bank accounts being accessible only by identity number. Homes and offices open to identity numbers; public buildings have turnstile systems at their entryways requiring identity numbers for visitors passing through. Someone who sneaks in from the provinces could perhaps beg on the streets all their life, but even then, there’s only so much time until a palace guard accosts them, demanding proof of their government-assigned identity.
“Ihear,” Pampi says, “that they’re not merely intruders, butSicans.”
The man with the cigar grimaces and starts to ease away from the cubicle divider. There’s too much unrest in the outermost areas of Talin right now tobe speaking such nonsense. Pampi knows it, but she wants to test just how much she can get away with inside the palace.
“There cannot be Sicans in the kingdom,” he says, though his surety of the claim wavers before he has even finished his sentence. San-Er is safe, but Talin is not. And if Talin is unguarded, then isn’t it possible that foreign intruders might have arrived, that they might have found a way to enter the capital after time spent lurking in the provinces?
Pampi sneaks another look at the guards. When her colleague sits down at his desk and turns back to his computer, she allows herself the ghost of a smile. Under her sleeve, a blue crescent-moon tattoo is inked into the white of her skin.
Leida slaps her hand on the surveillance room door, startling those who are pretending not to watch her.
“Back to work,” she shouts. “Keep the games in order, understand?”
She receives a series of affirmative responses. Everyone is too afraid of the captain of the guard to argue, lest they end up like the people she has hauled into a jail cell for no reason other than because they looked at her wrong.
Pampi hunches over her screens and waits for the palace guards to exit. Once the room returns to its usual activity, she goes to fetch the papers she’s printed. Good. This will be useful.
In the handbag under her desk, her own wristband flashes the number2, sitting idle in wait.
CHAPTER7
The restaurants that operate near the coliseum are less a row of buildings and more a collective operational body, second-floor kitchens with staircases that lead into the first-floor sitting area of another unit and third-floor seating areas that only get patrons from the dumpling shop on the fourth floor, directly above. Though San-Er is claustrophobic, at least everything one could want is always within reach.
Calla plucks a dish from a waitress’s platter as she passes, leaving a coin in its place. The waitress doesn’t even notice, too busy trying to fulfill the breakfast orders being shouted in her direction. With one finger twisting around the cord of the landline she’s standing beside, Calla clamps down on the receiver with her shoulder, then uses her free hand to pinch the top of a dumpling and plop it into her mouth. She’s barely listening to August on the other end.
“—you have to get it back. I’m not amused at all, Calla.”
“When did I suggest this would be amusing?” she asks, words muffled around her mouthful of dumpling. She makes a round shape with her lips,sucking air in to cool the rich meat and salted cabbage on her tongue. It burns her throat as it goes down, but the fridge in her apartment has been bare since yesterday, so even the cheapest dumplings taste as good as gold on her empty stomach. She can imagine August pinching the bridge of his nose as he listens to her eating.
“None of this is going to work if you’re eliminated.”
“Hey,” Calla says. She swallows her food and clears her throat to speak again. “Can you please get it together? I was already in these games before you got involved. I’m not getting eliminated that easily.”
August gives an irritated huff. “Fine. I can keep your wristband functioning so that it doesn’t expire today. Just get it back. Which player took it?”
Calla shrugs, then realizes that her cousin cannot see her. She was given his personal cellular number, but it’s been so long since she used a telephone—not since she was in Er’s palace—that she hardly remembers how they function. He’s already furious that she didn’t contact him immediately when the incident took place yesterday, but it isn’t her fault that she needed to hunt down a public line first.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “I didn’t think to ask while I was trying not to get stabbed. Male. Tall. Pale.”
Another vexed noise from August. None of those physical descriptors mean anything when the body she’s describing is at the hospital, returned to its original occupant. The newsreels had too much to cover last night with the first location pings starting across the twin cities, so Calla hadn’t seen the fight at the market broadcast anywhere. Most of the battle had happened out of view from the cameras, in that storage space, so there was very little footage to offer. Today’s reruns might insert coverage of Calla’s wristband being stolen when they finish filtering through the bloodiest footage for the more boring encounters—Calla only needs to wait until one network is interested enough to announce her thieving opponent’s number. After that, August can look at his lists and get hera name. She supposes that he could also go into the surveillance room right now and find the footage himself, but he’s already meddling to keep her wristband active, and Leida Miliu might start asking questions if he attempts anything more.
“Start tracking him down,” August demands, though surely he knows there isn’t much Calla can do at present. “And keep an eye out—there’s a possibility that the twin cities have been infiltrated by foreign agents from Sica. Their motive is unclear.”
Calla frowns. She picks up another dumpling, but this time she only gnaws at the edges of its floury skin. “Are they planning to invade?”
