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The celebration didn’t last long. The younger boys sugar-crashed and turned in. Jeffy fell asleep on the sofa, and Amihan wept at the kitchen table about her ill-fated family until she passed out with her head on her arms.

Marmeg slung the pack over her shoulder. She stood by the door and took in the tableau. Better to leave now than face the drama of the morning. She ducked out and closed the door. The chill, moist air was a welcome relief after the stuffiness of their apartment. The rain had tapered into a heavy mist that clung to Marmeg and slicked the sidewalk. Fog blew in ghostly drifts from the coast and wove around the street lights.

A quarter of the distance passed before her calves protested. Too late she recalled the medic’s warning to stay off her legs. She gritted her teeth against the pain, but she was limping badly by the time she arrived at the shelter.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a bed for you,” said the night manager. She handed Marmeg a ratty sleeping bag. “The rain’s got us full tonight. You’re welcome to find a spot on the floor.”

Marmeg found an empty space by the wall of a cavernous room lined with bunk beds, all occupied. She settled her pack behind her, trying to get the softer items to provide some cushion from the gear. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, a baby wailed. Marmeg slid her legs into the bag, shoes and all, and leaned back to check her ratings.

Minerva had released a statement saying they would look into the Sierra Challenge results, but as of yet, they hadn’t contacted Marmeg even once. The only people who had reached out to her were others in similar situations: born without a license, filching their gear, stuck in dead-end jobs that didn’t require legit schooling—the people for whom she embodied hope.

Her ratings bounded around like a demented basketball. She sighed as she cleared the cuff’s message buffer again and again. In the final cluster of private messages was one from Jeffy:
MOM’S WAITING AT BUS STATION FOR YOU
. Too bad she hadn’t seen the warning earlier. Then, near the end of the list, a one-liner from a meaningless address:
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
.

So, the Mountain Mikes were paying attention. Was that a promise? A threat? Did it matter? She had given them her answer already.

She lay awake for a long time and stared at the cement ceiling. Salty, unshed tears ran down the back of her throat, draining away like her dreams. A real degree, embed races, moot surgery: all gone. Hope receded to an unreachable distance in the hours after midnight.

The restless murmurs and snuffles of slumbering bodies surrounded her. She had to get herself out of the shelter, but how? Sleep took her at last, before she came up with a good answer.

* * *

The morning bell rang. Gray daylight filtered in through high, small windows. The room came to life with yawns and groans and the creak of metal frames. Marmeg left the shelter after eating breakfast. She needed fresh air.

Last night’s rain had left the city smelling earthy and clean. She walked to a dilapidated park bench and sat down to check her messages.

She had a new one from T’shawn:
MINERVA RACE
COMM
SAY RULES BE RULES. FANS
BE
FIGHTING BACK.
His earlier message—the one he’d sent at the start of the race—caught her attention:
GIVE ME YOUR GEAR IF YOU TOAST OUT?

He’d meant it as a joke, but she
had
almost toasted out. The words nagged at her mind. Her gear: exos, chips, sleeves. They would be worth something. She felt sick at the thought, but she couldn’t conceive of a better solution. The shelter would give her two weeks. After that, she’d be out on the street with no address. Her ratings would plummet. No one would employ her. The sooner she could get back home, the better.

MEET UP AT ELEVEN-OH?
she sent to T’shawn.

He responded that he could. She spent the morning answering what passed for fan mail, not that she had any prior experience to go by. Half of it was hateful—the usual rants against unlicensed and postnatals freeloading off taxpayers—and the other half exhorted her to fight Minerva.
DON’T LET THEM DENY YOU! BE THE HERO WE NEED!
But in her heart, she couldn’t be what they wanted, not with this race. Not until she won by her own means.

The walk to T’shawn’s place took ten times longer than it would have with functional calf muscles. She limped past cars for hire that she couldn’t afford. Her mind jittered with lingering frustration, and her whole body ached, but her mood lifted when she entered the abandoned building where her friend lived and worked.

He was holed up in a back room, well hidden from the street by small, paper-covered windows. Black-market gear gleamed in stacks around the perimeter. A workbench sat against the far wall. An oscilloscope, multimeters, probes, and screens littered its surface.

T’shawn gave her a rueful smile, grasped her shoulder in a half hug.

“Win some, lose some,” he said.

“Full right, that.”

“What you be here for today? Twice in a week is a special treat.” He flashed his toothy grin at her.

“Want a quiet talk for a sell-back.”

His grin vanished. “Marm, you not serious. What you do with yourself if you go back to nat? Don’t let this race bull get you lost in the head, friend.”

“Only way out, brud,” Marmeg said. “Get good credit for all my chips. Pay out school fees. Do the slow way.”

“Old way, more like,” he said, grimacing.

“Yeah, well, Ma kicked me out. Stuck myself good.”

“Not again!”

Marmeg pressed the case with the two unused chips into T’shawn’s hand.

“How much for these plus the seven inside? Three of ’em busted.”

T’shawn sucked on his upper lip as he typed in some numbers. He showed her the final tally on his screen.

“Minus a few hundred for the surgeon.”

It would be enough to cover the first tuition installment for the elder care program—enough to get her back into Amihan’s good graces.

“Trigger it. Set me up with the doc. Got any work for me?”

“Naw, Marm, nothing paid. Barely cover my own. Get me some new code, might get you some treats again.”

“Can’t test code without chips.”

“Don’t give up, hear? You one of the best we ever got, and you need to get out. Show the kids what can do. Get me a benefits gig someday.”

Marmeg laughed to cover the lump in her throat. “Stay sane, brud. Ping me when you got the date.”

* * *

Her next stop was a used-gear shop. She’d filched many of her own exos from the trash cans in the back. The owner didn’t mind, since he couldn’t fix the broken stuff, and he would buy some of Marmeg’s flips when she found an upgrade. The inside of the store was crammed with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Dusty plastic bins brimmed with parts sorted by function.

Marmeg walked along the scuffed, dirty floor tiles and went straight to the front counter. Chips gleamed inside the glass case. She put her bag of gear down, fighting the urge to curse at the tiny capsules. The sound of clanking metal drew the owner from the back. His tight gray curls contrasted with his dark skin, and his face crinkled into a broad smile.

“Marmeg! What can I do for you?”

She marveled that he remembered her name. She couldn’t recall his. He’d tolerated her filching, but he hadn’t been this friendly in the past.

“Want to sell this.”

“Sure, sure. You must be in line for some real gear now.” He sorted through the items, putting the torn and bloody sleeve straight into the trash, separating the older-generation parts from the new.

“No more gear. I’m out.”

“But the race—you can’t be quitting now?”

So, he knew about that. “Full busted. Race took the last of it, and Mom kicked me out. Need money.”

He pushed the gear aside and leaned on the counter. “Well that’s a shame, considering your skills. I thought a scout would’ve picked you up by now, got you some sponsors.”

She shook her head.

“Have you seen your ratings? The news today? You’re up. Minerva’s sinking like a rock.”

Marmeg shrugged. Ratings had their value, but they didn’t pay for tuition or put food on the table.

The shop owner sighed. “This stuff isn’t worth much. How about a job? You fix broken gear for me, I pay you by the hour. And you have to work here, in the front, and record some ads for the store. Help me boost my ratings.”

A job would let her save up, get Felix his license. Maybe earn back her chips if she kept at it long enough.
What for?
she thought.
You’ll never race again. They won’t let you
. Regardless, she could use the money for any number of things, not the least of which was keeping Amihan off her back.

“Okay. Deal. Gotta sort some other business. Start next week?”

“I’ll see you on Monday.”

As Marmeg exited the shop, her cuff zapped her wrist. T’shawn had a surgery scheduled for her the following day.

* * *

Marmeg sat at a plastic table and ate a basket of hot, greasy fries with the last of Jer’s credit. It was a treat to herself. Her legs and arms ached from the chip extractions, and pain pills were the only thing saving her from a stunning nitrous-oxide headache. She’d kept the chip in her brain stem. The surgeon wanted extra fees for that, and T’shawn had talked his buyer into a better price overall. It made little difference to keep it.

She traced the table’s random cracks and stains with her left pinky. The heat from the fries soothed her raw throat. She’d managed to save her tears until she was alone. When she had let them loose, the sobs had ripped through her like an angry spirit. She needed the comfort of starch and fat.

Her cuff buzzed, and Marmeg looked down to see a stranger requesting a live call. The face belonged to an older man with lined brown skin, dark eyes, and wire-rimmed glasses. A full beard and moustache matched his salt-and-pepper hair. She accepted the call.

“Miss Guinto, yes? I’m sorry to bother you like this. My name is Sachiv Jagadisha.”

Marmeg stared at him blankly. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t recall why.

“I’m Ardha’s father,” he explained. “I’m calling you because I discovered that not only do we need to thank you for helping our child, we need to apologize for zir behavior. Ardha was gravely injured, and zie has been unconscious until today. They can’t save zir natural legs, but zie is lucky to have so many enhancements already. They say they can integrate artificial muscle and bone into what’s left.”

Marmeg nodded, unsure how to respond. At least now she knew why the name and face were familiar. She could see the family resemblance.

“I’m sorry. I’m talking on and on. My child became lucid only yesterday. Zie confessed to my wife—zir mother—what zie had done to you earlier in the race. And yet you were kind enough to save zir at the cost of the race itself. You are truly selfless, and you have been very badly rewarded. My family and my colleagues who supported Ardha in the race—we would like to extend a credit to you.”

“Can’t take it.”

“Please, you must. It’s not a great deal of credit, but we feel badly about what our child has done.”

Marmeg forced herself to speak in slow, full sentences. “Can’t take it, sir, but thank you.” She took a deep breath and decided she might as well tell him the whole truth; a confession for a confession. “I didn’t win the race fairly. Got help from some . . . mountain people who took me to shortcuts. One of them brought me to Ardha, else I never would’ve found zir. And then—” She broke off, looked away from the kind brown eyes on the screen, and lapsed into familiar rhythms. “Did what was right. Tried to make up for cheats, you know?”

Ardha’s father sighed. “You were sabotaged and you were aided, but that was the work of others. It is you who saved our child. Forget the race and think of the credit as a token of our gratitude. Please. My wife will not forgive me if I accept your refusal.”

Marmeg’s face flushed with suppressed tears.
Don’t be an idiot. This money can only help, and why shouldn’t you get something for all that you went through?
But the thought didn’t sit right. A different idea nibbled around the edges of her mind.

“You got any pay gigs?”

“Sorry?”

“Paid work. A job I could do,” Marmeg clarified. “Got a college admit but can’t pay for it. That’s partly why I raced. Want to get an embed design degree. Get myself out of this hole. Make a better life, you know? I can code for you.”

“I see.”

Sachiv’s expression was distant, and Marmeg wondered if she’d blown her chance. Her school contests were too far in the past to count, but she had her own designs, the illegal ones.

“Custom built the ’ware for my own rig.” She pulled her screen from her cargo pocket and sent him the source code. “Take a look. Steady pay beats a credit dump, you catch me?”

Sachiv smiled at her. “Quite right. Yes, quite right. Unfortunately, we cannot hire you until you have at least the bachelor’s degree. Let me think about it some more. Perhaps I can find a happy solution. I’ll get back to you.”

The call ended. Marmeg leaned back against the hard curve of the seat. She looked around at an unfamiliar world, noise buzzing around her. Her heart raced and her hands shook as she took a bite of the fries. They were cold. She couldn’t care. Her fate stood poised on a pinnacle, its balance as precarious as her footing during the race. Which way would it land?

Marmeg dumped the unappetizing food in the compost bin and walked outside. A hot, dry breeze whispered through her hair as she strolled along the uneven cement sidewalk and waited for the call. And walked. And waited some more. Sweat itched on the back of her neck. The afternoon wore on and the sun beat down from a cloudless sky, but sitting still proved impossible.

She was gulping water from a tepid public fountain when her cuff zapped. The message came from Ardha’s father, all text:
NO JOB OFFER. SORRY! BUT WE CAN PAY TUITION AND IF YOU KEEP UP YOUR GRADES, YOU’LL HAVE A REMOTE INTERNSHIP OFFER FOR NEXT SUMMER.

Marmeg didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she sat on the sidewalk and did both. Getting a fully paid college education was monumental. Even her mother couldn’t deny that. She could save all her money from the job at the used gear shop. Get her chips back. Get Felix’s license. Race again next summer. She could go home.