Heranika’s heels clicked loudly through the tile hall of the Asylum House, Orestes and Korinthia traipsing behind her. Lu followed with a grumbling sigh, the uncles guarding the exits with glares. Lu plopped cross-armed into a chair and scooted loudly away from the visitation window, refusing to look as if he’d been anything but dragged in. A loud buzzer sounded and the prisoners were filed into their booths on the other side of the thick glass. Lu scoffed. Gideon was glowing, too healthy, not a mark of struggle on him. Benny sat at the adjacent window, smiling at Lu with a small wave, but Lu only glared from the corner, uncooperative and bored. He was there as an accessory, a game token Pa had sculpted, a press release photo designed by Heranika, targeting the Conductor who wanted his own son to appear as loyal and invested as they’d bragged theirs was. But Lu was no longer Lu-Bird. He no longer belonged to the Wells, or to Gideon, and there was no Adon to threaten to keep him there. 

It hit him just then, a thought he’d hovered around for ages: Gideon had succeeded. Lu had ripped out his heart in the end. No matter what happened, he’d yanked it clean out of his own chest and wandered the world as a zombie, searching everywhere for a ghost. 

He sighed and shifted in his chair, scanning the other prisoners, soon-to-be victims of the Conductor’s pipeline that pulled new releases back into his network of disposable soldiers. Ignoring Ores’ blatant glares and Korin’s snide comments, Lu watched Gideon interact with the prisoners, already their leader, charismatic in a way Lu would never understand, with his plastic politician smile and feeble handshakes that promised to make good on his threats. Lu had to play smarter if he wanted to be free of them. He had to know the rules so he could spot their lies, and he had to stop living as if he was still playing on their game board. 

Lu sighed loudly, pushing up from the chair just as Gideon gestured proudly to him, bragging to other prisoners while his wife and kids sat patiently in front of him. Lu scoffed, rolling his eyes, and stomped to the door without a goodbye, daring the uncle to stop him, fists prepared to retaliate. The uncle stepped aside with a gulp and Lu wondered if he’d inherited something from Gideon after all. He held up a hand behind him to Heranika with an annoyed warning, “it won’t work twice,” then stormed through the Asylums Correctional Facility and returned to the clean air of the Mids, turning over the beginning of an idea into a plan of rebellion.

If there was one thing he’d learned through contracting with AI Entertainment, it was that the most annoying and uncontrollable setbacks were those that disruped materials manufacturing, the kind that rippled into a cascading domino-line of problems. If Gideon was acting as the Conductor’s supervisor inside the Asylum, manufacturing a warehouse full of ready and willing gangsters by promising jobs and safety in the Quartet, then all Lu really had to do was siphon the pipeline to separate Gideon from the Conductor. If he could bleed it out entirely, maybe the whole Flock would collapse. He had little room for remorse, and any potential guilt he felt was immediately satiated by the emblem of the eagle emblazoned on his back. 

What if he gave those ex-cons a choice: follow Gideon’s illusion of safety and promises of retaliation, or take Lu’s offer of stable employment. Most of them only wanted to protect their people. Lu could teach them skills, or he could find the people to teach them skills, like the trade-smiths who made their exhibit models. He could bring experts to help them develop a path, mobilize them out of the Wells, if they wanted the opportunity. It was the most un-Gideon thing he could think of, a quiet opposition, the validation that he could be different. 

It took him over a year of planning, designing the program, networking, building curriculums, and getting accredited certifications to put the workshop together. Then there was finding the right people and proving it could be done, but shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday, by stubborn spite alone, Lu was spending every free weekend in his new volunteer office, a closet in one of the Asylum Recovery Centers below the Arcade. The ARC employees didn’t mind him, the overworked social workers were happy for his enthusiasm, and when his placements began reducing their Corrections recidivism rates, they liked him even more. 

Lu made sure his clients received the proper training and workwear to succeed if they wanted to, did his best to reduce their risk to new employers willing to take a chance on his program, and connected them with proper Asylum therapists to keep them on track and accountable after they graduated. He occasionally helped out with babysitting or covering shifts so they could make their required appointments. He spoke to district panels in the Wells and Mids, pointing out impossible discrepancies ex-cons were expected to navigate and how the trail led them right to the Conductor: four therapy checks a week, seven twelve-hour shifts, passing a monthly wellness exam, and juggling any unexpected Asylum checks, all because of the fear they would take advantage of a system that only used them. 

Every time, someone with more power than they deserved would roll their eyes and say he was too young. He perfected his challenging smile while casually dropping Gideon’s name, because they all remembered the trial, and he watched them eat their words as they compared him to the young man they’d seen beaten and bruised in those videos. Or else they stood purple-faced and shaking with rage and declared that authority had to be absolute. 

Lu’s passion and efforts did reach several districts that eased their requirements into do-able tasks and lists of more automated tests, and Lu finally exhaled relief after the first six months successfully proved all his points. He’d navigated an extremely stressful group of clients intent on ruining the program for everyone: one had been scared of anything that wasn’t Asylum Corrections, too adjusted to inside life, another had been sent by Gideon, but the outliers didn’t prove him wrong as he continued to gather data. So by twenty-seven, he was not only keeping ex-cons out of the Quartet and disrupting Gideon’s plans, but he was also proud of his clients and program recruits, proud enough that he felt warm. Warm from the inside, warm enough to heat his home, warm enough to climb to Adon once he found him. Warm enough to keep looking. 

One day, an old uncle who’d once changed his diapers passed through Lu’s program and Lu wasn’t sure if he should help or look for traps, but the aged man cried about a new baby and promises to a wife Lu had never imagined, and Lu realized how toxic and enticing Gideon’s world was to a certain kind of person. It was an addiction and Lu was offering rehab—it made sense that the drug dealers would come sniffing. Lu gave the man opportunities for several decent jobs and he diligently chose and worked his family out of the Flock’s talons. Other uncles came after that, and Lu watched out for them, avoided large groups of people, and stuck to busy corridors to and from the workshop, but still, they hovered, threateningly or desperately. 

The group of Flock uncles got rowdy one day, arguing with ARC staff who liked Lu enough to keep them in the lobby. Lu snuck out the back to find Phaios waiting with a pitying smile and an extra helmet, his railbike already rumbling on the line. Lu jumped on and they quickly out-maneuvered Gideon’s goons, stopping at Nika’s track because Phai had to file his required drug-test before the big race in the morning. Lu wandered into the dark, empty stadium and plopped onto a blue plastic seat, remembering showing Adon the track, his unexpectedly bright eyes swiveling to take in every scene, they way he’d smiled, then cried when the Conductor’s rider got hit, the way they’d kissed in the hall and someone had seen, someone had told. Then there was Kinesias and Mykos, and all the Flock demanding his heart. 

They weren’t Gideon’s men anymore, Lu figured, contemplating the strangers wearing Flock-patterned coats, internally debating whose orders they were following. His mind wandered as he watched four racers round the obstacles of the track. The younger men were probably Ores’ friends, but the uncles might be Heranika’s employees, easily bought, easily betrayed. 

Lu’s eyes tracked Nika pulling into her garage and rattling off a list of orders to the crew running to meet her as he contemplated the remains of the Flock. The three remaining riders flew past on the startline for a final lap, one pulling effortlessly ahead of the other two as Lu relaxed, letting his thoughts fall apart into exhausted nightmares of Benny’s buzzing needles, Pa’s cruel rings, or Adon’s disappearing smile. He had to remind himself that he’d been a kid then, that his dumb plan had made sense in the wake of so many breaks and bruises, and the inescapable grip Gideon had over him. 

☆