The ground shook and cracked right before the shockwave sent him sliding onto the floor. Jonathan rose on wobbly legs to see plumes of black smoke drifting across the plaza. A hole was blown into the side of the Adjuster’s headquarters, exposing burnt walls and cracking concrete.

Even the statue to the First Adjuster had tumbled, the great bronze construct crashing into the ground. Amidst the smoke there were people, some lying still, others wailing in pain. The sound of sirens filtered in.

Fear arrived cold as Jonathan looked for his buddy. It was only a second before he found the small sphere floating near his head but the adrenaline still made his heart race.

“Buddy,” he said. “Call the chief.”

The call rang in the small implant inside his ear, loud and taking too long.

“In the middle of something here,” said Erika, the Chief of Securities and Order.

“No, chief, I’m in the middle of it. I was walking across the Weather plaza when it went off. Accident?”

“Don’t know yet. Start sniffing, I gotta go,” she terminated the call.

Security drones swarmed the sky already as they drifted over the heads of the wounded. Above, clouds gathered where none should be, casting the City in shadow. He crossed the fallen statue, following the cobblestone path up to the reception.

The glass windows and doors had shattered and glass crunched beneath his feet. People ran outside, spilling into the plaza, bumping into him in their rush to get away from the building.

Jonathan leaned over the counter in the reception to see a young lady cowering behind it, arms wrapped around her knees.

“Security officer, miss,” he said. “Need you to let me in.”

She risked a glance up, eyes hidden behind her long hair. She slowly relented, gathering up the courage to stand up.

“I need your verification,” she whispered.

Jonathan plucked his buddy out of the air and placed it into the scanner. It beeped. The lady looked at her computer behind the desk and handed him a card.

“Go home, miss,” he said. “This whole place will be evacuated soon.”

He ran the card against a scanner and the large steel door unlocked. He stepped inside into a metal cube. Scanners ran over his body, before a gentle bip sounded and the door ahead opened.

The hall inside was cavernous, an open space all the way to the fiftieth floor. A statue of an Adjuster, holding a globe in one arm and a paint brush in the other, emerged from a dark pool of still water. Curving stairs flanked it and rose all the way to the ceiling.

“Buddy,” he said. “Guide me to the security control room.”

He followed the bot inside the now deserted building.

#

The control room was crowded with screens hanging from every surface and the stench of sweat. Footage from across the building streamed before the eyes of the nervous security personnel. The only man standing held his uniform hat in his hand and was in the process of chewing the brim.

“Which section got hit?” Jonathan asked.

The bald man looked at him, surprised, eyes quickly recognising the uniform.

“High-atmospheric control, humidity sub-division.”

“Show me.”

The footage played. Adjusters and engineers worked at their stations, maintenance workers cleaned the halls, a normal day. Then blinding light and fire.

“How far back have you searched?” Jonathan asked.

“We’re going hour by hour,” he gestured to the other men. “We’ve gone back a day. Nothing.”

“Been able to narrow down the epicenter of the bomb?”

“It’s not on any camera. Blindspot, maybe?”

“Or hidden,” Jonathan said. “There is a lot of machinery down there, isn’t there? Access tunnels, ventilation shafts, maybe even between the walls. Any construction on site recently?”

“Nothing major, just small repairs, bathrooms and lights, that sort of thing.”

“And no security breaches?”

“No,” the man started chewing his hat again.

“My colleagues should arrive shortly, keep doing what you’re doing.”

Jonathan left them behind in search of the blast zone.

#

It was raining outside. The first unscheduled rain Jonathan had ever experienced, falling in oblique sheets that quickly drenched him. He skirted the curving walls of the Headquarters along the plaza until he found the gaping hole.

First responders were already there, dragging wounded and dead out of the rubble. Smoke drifted out from a fire deeper inside as security officers evacuated everyone else.

Jonathan climbed over the debris. The whole ceiling had burst open several floors high, before it all collapsed deeper down. The blast had been deep, the exterior of the building was just the edge of the blast. The explosion was aimed at the layers of machines buried deep under the earth, long chimneys and tubes stretching out into the atmosphere where chemicals were pumped.

It would be days until anything else could be gleaned from this mess considering the lower levels had completely collapsed but meanwhile the effects would be severe and systemic.

He called his chief.

“Assume an attack,” he said.

“Positive? Who could possibly benefit from this?” she asked.

“You assume rationality, but there’s been no claims, no memorandums or proclamations. This was carefully planned, it’s not easy to smuggle a bomb into the Adjuster’s inner sanctum, but no clues as to the motive.”

“And the perpetrator?”

“Working on it, nothing obvious.”

“Keep me informed.”

#

“The AI has finished crawling,” Sara announced. She was a serious woman, hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She had been doing this far longer than him and her results demanded respect.

The feed played across one of the screens. The man in focus was dressed like a janitor, a little too round around the waist and hair balding at the top. Clean shaven, ordinary. He pushed a little cart with buckets and mops, trailing a trash can.

The man went into a bathroom with his tools and the new trash can, where the cameras could not follow. Fifteen minutes later he emerged again, setting everything back on the cart. The video paused.

“Did you notice it?” Sara asked.

“He doesn’t have a buddy…” Jonathan whispered.

“Good catch. But there’s something else.”

She replayed the video.

“What am I missing?” Jonathan asked as the video looped again.

“Why the new trash can? He doesn’t do that in any other bathroom. Just this one, right at the predicted epicenter of the blast.”

“How long ago?” Jonathan asked.

“Five days. He put in a sick notice yesterday.”

“So he hid the device in the trash can. False bottom maybe?”

“Possible. But look where he came from.”

The video tracked back, following the man in reverse, all the way to the lower levels. The video resumed. He entered a room, marked authorized only. He emerged with the trash can in hand a few moments later.

“What section is that?” Jonathan asked.

“Exhaust fins. They run all the way to the ceiling.”

“So they are open from outside?”

“Exactly.”

#

On the roof the rain fell heavy with the wind gusting in every direction as water pooled beneath his feet. The metal fins burst into the air like flowers, maximizing surface area as water steamed down.

Jonathan peered over the edge. All you needed was a drone, a child’s toy, and you could smuggle anything into the building. The adjusters were too safe in their perch, too sure of their positions, too confident to see any attack coming. He sent a message to his chief. He expected security around the Adjusters would be raised to levels not seen since the Dawn.

That left the matter of the buddy. Its mere absence would raise alarms. Then there were the practical matters: ID, payments, locks, everything was coded to a buddy. There were very few places one could hide undetected.

He asked his buddy to requisition a car. Outside the plaza, he climbed into the neat sphere as it glided forward on tracks. He left the broad avenues and towering skyscrapers behind and was greeted by the bountiful fields that ringed the City. Grain, apples, everything they needed grew in this narrow band.

The rain still thundered down, flooding the fields and covering the street in mud and flowing rivers. He cringed at the knowledge that they would all be eating nutripaste for weeks. Slowly the world changed, getting darker and sickly green the closer he got to the edge of the City.

The day bled into a green haze that hid the sun and the rain, but just to the side of the road he found Frank’s house.

#

The car parked just beside the tractor, near the rectangular block of metal that was Frank’s home. The noxious air spilled in as soon as the car’s door slid open and Jonathan coughed, the gas thick and clawing at his throat, as he got out into the muddy ground. He pressed his buddy against the sensor at the house’s airlock.

“What do you want?” came Frank’s voice.

“I need your help,” Jonathan said bluntly.

“Isn’t there a statute of limitations on favors?” Frank asked, but the door slid open.

Jonathan stepped into the rusting metal cubicle and air cycled in cool and fresh before the way inside was clear. Frank sat at the small table on a plastic chair, nursing a beer as he read a book. The entire house was in this room, kitchen at one corner, bathroom at the other, not even a curtain to separate the crowded space.

“You seen the news?” Jonathan asked.

“So that’s why you’re here,” Frank said, finally looking out over his glasses. “To try and pin this on Edgers.”

“The evidence…”

“You think any Edger wants this?” Frank interrupted. “A sunny day over there is a drought here. A drizzle is a flood. By tomorrow all my fields will be dead.”

“The suspect did not have a buddy. And his face is not on any database. No one could live in the City like that, not for long.”

“Hm…” Frank leaned back on his chair. “That’s a first. And you’re looking at me for answers? I’ve never seen anyone without a buddy,” he coughed, a gurgling wet sound that did not seem to stop. After catching his breath he continued. “Even my freaking door needs a buddy now. Whoever did it, it's not us. It takes a lot to stay hidden like that anywhere in the City.”

“It only really takes one thing,” Jonathan said. “Privacy.”

#

“He disappears here,” the chief said, pointing to the screen in the conference room.

The suspect left his car in the mists of the edge, walking out into the haze and disappearing where the cameras could not pierce. The time-stamp marked it as just a few hours before the attack.

“Jonathan, Sara, any luck tracking him down?”

“I’ve been interviewing the locals, no one seems to recognize him,” Jonathan admitted.

“I’ve initiated a grid search of the habitable areas,” Sara said “Got drones in the air and officers searching homes, no luck so far.”

The chief leaned against the table with one hand, the other rubbing her temple. It was obvious she had been up since yesterday.

“Any other leads?” she asked. “Where was he staying?”

“Nowhere,” Jack spoke up. “Everyday, he called a car from just outside the Edge, went to work, then disappeared again. He’s out there somewhere on the border.”

“Could he have built a bunker?”

“No way he could smuggle all the equipment for power, air filters, airlocks and everything else without anyone noticing,” Jonathan said. “Someone out there is helping him.”

“Not just out there,” the chief said. “Close to the Adjusters, too. He didn’t have a buddy, but he had a keycard and passed the biometrics. Someone in security.”

She took a deep breath.

“Jonathan, you keep working the Edger angle with Sara. Jack, pull the feeds from the buddies, every member of the security staff. The rest of you, find me something new.”

#

Every house along the edge had been searched. The drones had scoured every inch, finding nothing but hidden cellars. The security angle was a bust. One-hundred percent up-time on the buddies and nothing besides personal secrets. They had searched all the way to the boundary of the Edge, where the thick mists started to dissolve into vacuum.

“What if he’s hiding in the City?” Jonathan asked Sara.

“Without a buddy? How?”

“What if he comes by foot,” Jonathan theorized. “Across the fields, far from the cameras along the road. Then, all he needs is a place to hide. Cover his face, find a hole where cameras don’t track.”

“Could be,” Sara admitted. “If that’s the case, how do we find him?”

“A lot of machinery runs under the ground, if I had to bet…”

The air roared. In the distance smoke rose black and thick.

He jumped in the car with Sara. It rode painfully slow over the mud from the rain that refused to stop. The closer they got to the smoke, the more jammed traffic became until it stopped. He activated the emergency code and all the stuck cars flowed from his path.

They passed the security officers and barriers, passed the ambulances, all the way to the foot of the high-rise. A civilian building, now with a chunk of open air and bare steel at its heart. The top half leaned to the side where it had crashed against another building as flames licked up the building.

#

Jonathan’s legs trembled in shock and dismay. All around, from advertisement screens hanging from the buildings, he was staring at Frank’s face below a wanted sign. Footage showed him entering the building with a package that could only be a bomb. He ran back to the car without waiting for Sara and sped as fast as the autopilot allowed.

For the first time in his life, Jonathan drew his gun. In the sudden night of the Edge, the air was cold and thick, the fumes swirling in the chaotic winds. He pressed his buddy into the scanner with emergency authorizations.

He found Frank inside, beer in hand as he smiled at Jonathan.

“Why?” Jonathan asked, gun pointed.

“Because you need to understand.”

“But I don’t, Frank. Why tilt the Adjustments? Why bomb a residential building filled with innocent people?”

“So you stop adjusting. So you stop ruining the world.”

“Put your hands up,” Jonathan said firmly.

Frank took one last sip of the beer before complying. Jonathan hand-cuffed him, then walked behind him, gun in hand.

“Outside, let’s go.”

Inside the car, Jonathan held his hands to the useless steering-wheel.

“If the adjustments suffer, then Edgers suffer more than most,” Jonathan said quietly.

Frank laughed, but it quickly turned into a gurgling cough.

“Lung cancer,” he said, still laughing. “That’s what your filters are worth. That's what my life is worth. Not anymore. You really don’t believe me? Then drive. Just drive forward. The car can take the vacuum for a good while, trust me on that.”

Jonathan stared out into the sickly green haze for a long moment.

He told the car to drive.

The green darkened until the car’s lights could barely pierce it, the air thick and swirling, before it dipped into grey and trailed away into wisps that dissolved in the vaccum. They broke out into the wastes, and suddenly the sky was crystal clear and dark. High above, stars shone bright over the dusty brown landscape.

There were lights out there. And more. Roads, built in the airless void. Domes. Bunkers spread across the hills. Cities sparkled in the dark. A whole world, hiding just outside the City, clinging to survival in the barren world.

Frank laughed.