The man led him down grey hallways inset with locked doors and flooded with glaring lights. A roach skittered across the cracked concrete. M'yu hoped it made it out of this place quick.
The Cap walked straight ahead, not even bothering to see if M'yu had followed. At the end of the hall, he pulled a linkcard out of his pocket. M'yu snuck closer; the man didn't react, so M'yu peered around.
The man ran a line of code on the card, and the door locks thunked open. M'yu's nose wrinkled. "Why hack it when your kinda clearance could blow through any door in this slum?"
Alley-Cap glanced over his shoulder and looked M'yu up and down. "Because I mysteriously seem to have misplaced my own card. This is a temporary one." He turned and pushed the door open, leading them into a reception area desked by some bored Magnate brute. "Afternoon," the Cap greeted as he strode across.
The door nearly closed on M'yu, and he hurried to keep up. Man, this guy's got long legs. Outside ugly square windows, the snowy road glistened with afternoon light. M'yu's breathing quickened, eyes darting for exits. Maybe not too long to get away from.
A firm hand came down on M'yu's shoulder. Leaning over, Alley-Cap muttered, "Run and I will hunt you to the ends of the planet." With a smile, he patted his shoulder, straightened, and nodded toward the door. "Heroes first."
M'yu cocked his head, but Alley-Cap just watched expectantly. With the Magnate brute boring holes in his back, M'yu shoved the door open to the outside.
The winter wind tossed his curls, its normal bite more pleasant than the stale air of the prison, even without his coat. M'yu glanced up and down the long, quiet street. A glittering Gloam Hall towered over crumbling offices. A pigeon pecked at a crumb on the sidewalk. A few well-dressed pedestrians shuffled through the cold.
The buildings here were packed tight; Hall Row was a terrible place for a thief, the least of which was the prison being here. No hidey-holes, no climbing spots, no unlocked doors. M'yu itched to run—but where to?
The hand clamped down on his shoulder again. "I thought we might talk there." Alley-Cap pointed to a hover parked across the street. The sphere of opaque glass floated a foot above the ground, its doors emblazoned with the scroll and sword insignia of the Capital.
M'yu's eyes widened. The only time he'd been inside of one of those technological marvels was in his dreams—and even in those dreams, that was after the Capital fell and owning a hover didn't reek of wealth and injustice.
M'yu slipped the Cap's grip and ran away, as hard and fast as he could—or at least he should've if he was any sort of revolutionary. Instead, he found himself ogling the hover and drawing nearer by the second. Alley-Cap hmmed and let go of him as they came to a stop, fishing out the makeshift linkcard again. The door unlocked with a hiss, glass sliding up and away to reveal a sleek interior. A podium in the center held a control panel, the biggest he'd ever seen. This thing was the size of five or six linkcards put together—a foot and a half, maybe two even. Its flat screen glittered like black gold.
"If you don't close your mouth, it might freeze that way," Alley-Cap said. He gestured at the plush black seats ringing the screen. "Well, go on then."
M'yu bit his lip, stepped back—and then climbed in. It felt like stepping into a different world. Alley-Cap fired up the control panel, and the engine whirred to life. Once the doors closed, cozy yellow lights flicked on and a heater blew warm air across M'yu's skin. The man selected a few more commands, then leaned back as the hover began to move. "Alright, kid. You got my attention. Why?"
M'yu twisted in his seat, trying to peer out the blackened windows. "Where are we going?"
"For now? In a circle. We could go for a full round-trip if I don't like your answer."
M'yu adjusted the air flow, relishing the heat. He didn't meet Alley-Cap's eyes, gaze trained on the magnificent screen. A dot moved across what looked like a crooked grid—roads, maybe. "You paid the Magnate's bail. Woulda had to to get me out, right? Can't send me back now."
A finger tapped against the leather seats. "I counted you for smarter than that, especially after you left me with that rather incriminating stolen linkcard in your coat."
"No."
"No?" Alley-Cap chuckled. "So you're not the mastermind after all?"
"No, I'm not playing this game." M'yu met the man's gaze. "You want something from me. Else you woulda left me to rot or bought me at auction, so give me my capping things and play straight with me, or throw me out and let me go."
Alley-Cap raised a brow. "And if I throw you out at the prison?"
M'yu just watched him. The sore in his mouth ached, and his burns prickled. The engine hummed and air sang as the hover's outer sphere rotated around the magnets attached to the inner one. M'yu listened to it, memorizing it note for note the way he memorized his code. If he wound up back in jail, at least he could say he'd done this. At least he'd made it this far.
Alley-Cap shook his head and reached for a compartment at his feet.
M'yu caught a new coat and store-shined shoes. "These aren't mine."
"Some people would say thank you."
"I said I wanted—"
"And I'm starting to think you aren't worth my time. I told you, you'll get your things when I give them to you. Why did you lure us down to the Gloam?"
"Thought it'd be funny to watch you jump."
"Adorable. Now the real answer."
M'yu pretended to think. "Oh, right. I got bored. I mean, isn't that why all miscreants my age act out?"
"Shouldn't you be in school?"
"That takes a parent with a linkcard."
"You don't seem to have any trouble getting your hands on those. A string of thirty card thefts in the last three months alone—and those are only the ones I could tie back to you."
"If you want, you can donate to my fan club."
Alley-Cap raised his brows. "I think I might already have. Where is the card you pilfered from me? It wasn't in prison collections."
M'yu shrugged. "Must have burned in the fire."
"Right." Alley-Cap checked their location on the map, nodded, and tapped a command on the control panel. The opaque glass turned transparent—the street passed beneath their feet, and colorful market stalls rolled by outside the windows. Shoppers ogled the hover, uncommon as they were down in the Gloam. Eyes met his with wonder, with shock, with familiarity and revulsion—
"Rot 'n ruin!" M'yu ducked beneath the seatbacks, but the all-encompassing windows didn't really offer much cover.
"Don't be shy. You did rescue the Magnate's niece after all." With a tap of the console, the city's Anthem of the Hero began blasting out from the hover. "Try waving." Alley-Cap held up his hand in the stoic, arrogant pose of most city officials.
"Would you knock it off?" M'yu hissed.
"Why? You don't want the adoration of the crowds?" From somewhere hidden in the crowd, a rock hit the window. "I thought most boys your age wished everyone knew who they were."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Why do you think?"
A squash splattered its guts against the glass. Outside, angry faces stayed downcast, and folks—his folks, these people he was fighting for, young revolutionaries he'd rallied, community members he'd lived beside, thieves he'd stolen from and with—watched him out of the corner of their eye, remembering. M'yu sold out, they would think. M'yu saved one of them. M'yu is one of them.
M'yu hung his head. The glass went dark, and the map showed them turning onto another street.
"You don't belong here." Alley-Cap's voice was quiet, the bite gone.
"I did before that."
"No." Alley-Cap shook his head and leaned forward, arms across his knees. "No, I don't think you did."
"If you wanted me as a slave, why not just buy me at auction?" M'yu looked up, eyes flashing a challenge, but there was something strangely soft in Alley-Cap's face. M'yu looked away.
"I don't want you as a slave. I want you to join my House."
M'yu's words froze in his throat. The Cap's face was earnest, brows raised, but M'yu searched it long and hard.
"It's not a trick," the man promised.
M'yu's eyes narrowed, and he leaned back in his seat. "Why me?"
"That's the wrong question."
"It's the question I got."
"Have. It's the question you have. The nobles will eat you alive if we don't teach you proper grammar."
"The nobles?" M'yu choked.
"I told you." Alley-Cap straightened. "I want you in my House. Did you think I was jesting?"
His House. He wants me in the Capital. The Capital that housed the pigs ruining this city, that drove folks into poverty for sport, that smiled on the Magnate's exploitative mushroom farms and rewarded him handsomely while the people that worked the field rotted away and died penniless.
The Capital that housed the central linkcard system.
M'yu drew a sharp breath. "What's the right question?"
Alley-Cap's eyes twinkled. "'Where do I sign?'"
"Not a citizen; I can't sign anything."
"Ah, yes." Alley-Cap patted his pockets and drew out a linkcard. "I think you've been looking for one of these for quite a while, no? Maybe you can quit checking other people's pockets if you have your own."
M'yu's fingers itched to snag it, but he held his composure. "Is it programmable?"
"I'm generous, not an idiot. No, it's not programmable." Alley-Cap dismissed the control panel's map and swiped to another screen. He brought the card close to the console and an ID number generated, along with an entry box for a name. "Not by you at least."
The cursor blinked in the name box. "What's your name, kid?"
"What's yours?"
"Aevryn." The man eyed him expectantly.
His lips twisted. "M'yu."
Aevryn's face screwed up. "Like a cat?"
"What about it?" M'yu tensed and leaned forward.
Aevryn laughed. "I'm not going to fight you over your name, kid—well, not physically. But we'll need to pick something else."
"That's my name." M'yu's mother had given him that name after finding him ditched in a rich girl's dumpster as a baby.
"And you can keep it." Aevryn eyed him. "Just not around the nobles." The man tapped his thumb to his lips. "What about Morysko?"
M'yu's nose wrinkled.
"Myaksandro?"
M'yu scoffed. "Are you trying to get me punched in the face?"
Aevryn rolled his eyes and went back to tapping his thumb to his lips.
M'yu crossed his arms over himself. Abandoning his name felt like abandoning his family, and even if they'd thrown him out, he had never stopped fighting for them. But if faking a new name was the only way to get inside their system... "What about Mykta?"
"'The people's hero'?" Aevryn translated, head tilted.
"That's what it means?" M'yu shrugged. "I just thought it sounded snobby enough—"
"Oh, it's condescending alright." Aevryn typed it into the console. The program exited with a chime, and Aevryn handed the linkcard to M'yu.
The thing felt fragile and smooth, like a sheet of ice. He tucked it carefully into his new coat.
"That's officially your new identity." Aevryn met his eyes, and there was something in it dark and warning and—was that a spark of mischief M'yu saw? "Now let's just hope you can live up to it."