Smoke rises from the city sidewalk, curling upwards into thinner air, caressing the atmosphere with pale tendrils before being swept away by eastern winds. The tall young man lets his gaze briefly linger on space and sky as he exhales, lets the traffic become a muted blur of colour beside him, lets the busy noise fade. He allows himself to revel in being alive. To be quiet and thoughtless and calm in the midst of insanity—that is bliss.
Then someone pushes past him, shoves right up against his shoulder; how dare they, just who do they think they are, and with hardly an apology! A mumbled 'scuse me and they're off. Peter is furious, for rarely does he find such beauty in the world, and when he does, his personal space is to be stupendously revered. His personal space is always to be revered, obviously, but now so more than ever, and how dare they.
His fury is enough to make him miss the girl until she's too close to ignore. "Dear me, Mr. Wiggin, you seem a little—what's the term I'm looking for—ah—pissed off at the moment. Walk with me?"
The anger in his eyes is abruptly withdrawn. Peter assess the situation: several unlicensed black autos dispersed throughout the traffic, four well-built men in the crowd—two in front and two behind. There's no getting out of this.
He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets—he can pretend like he knows her, but it doesn't mean he can't still look annoyed—and trots alongside the girl as she heads in the direction of the empty lot where the Empire once stood.
"I didn't take you for the smoking type." She looks straight ahead, never once sparing him a glance, but she no doubt gave him a thorough once-over while he was otherwise occupied. Not that she needed to. She has all the intel she needs on him from the I.F. Probably knows the exact coordinates of every dirty pile of laundry on his bedroom floor.
The shrug he gives her is obnoxiously adolescent. "Addiction. It can happen to anybody."
"It's not even an e-cig. And you're not even legal."
"What can I say? I'm a traditionalist. Oh, and as long as we're honing in on details, here, Miss Arkanian, I'd like to point out that neither are you."
Her eyebrows raise ever so slightly, and he gives her a crooked smile. It's a heartbreaker's smile, or so he's been told—but he has no time for such tomfoolery as that. "The makeup might be enough to fool the masses, but I'm afraid I don't constitute as part of the masses."
"I know perfectly well you're not part of the masses," she says, "but you didn't recognize me on sight. For a few minutes there, I actually had some hope of avoiding any psychological probing."
"With the I.F. on your case? I doubt it."
She takes in a sharp breath. "So let's talk business."
"Let's not."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me, Arkanian. I'm not in the mood. You got that, Chamrajnagar?" He's talking directly to her chin now, crouching down and speaking at the thin transparent wire of her mic. "I offered up my services a long time ago, but you were an idiot and thought it was in your best interest to expose me. You're a fool, Polemarch. If Bean hadn't taken that Achilles bastard down with him, we'd all be dead right now."
"Or under Russian hegemony," adds the girl.
Peter gives a sharp laugh. "Even worse! Come on, Petra, lose the mic. Don't worry, folks, I won't hurt her. You can even keep your cronies around if you want. I just want to talk."
"And what if I don't want to talk?"
He grins, baring teeth that seem sharp but can't be. "Aw. You know you do."
Her shrug echoes his; it's an easy confession. "Lose the security," she says, and the team drops back, the cars let themselves fall behind.
Peter is impressed. "You're either really high up there, or really down low, if you can get them off your back."
"They happen to work for me, so I'd answer to the former. The American government happens to need me much more than I need them."
"American government!" Peter exclaims. He'd assumed... "How long did it take them to wrest you away from Armenia?"
"Not long. Got a treaty between them and made them hand me over, quick as you like."
"So it was your doing. Why America?"
"I'm amazed you speak of your own country with such disdain."
"Americans don't believe in America," says Peter. "Stay here long enough, you'll realize that. Any patriotism is a fad. We were on top of the world for a blink of an eye and we still somehow believe that we have power and influence over all of Eurasia."
"And yet the entire world speaks English. Not Chinese. Not Hindi. Not French. English."
"Technically, it's Common," Peter says, pulling his cigarette from between his teeth and letting smoke tangle between them.
"Would you mind?" says Petra.
"I would," he answers.
"Well," she says. "Let it not be said that your arrogance didn't precede you."
He grins. "I don't actually smoke. Not a lot. Just when it feels right."
"And at the age of seventeen in the middle of New York feels right to you?"
"More right than ever, but some bastard's always gotta ruin it."
"Language, Peter."
"Like you don't swear like a sailor every chance you get."
The smile he gives her is the teasing, tongue-between-teeth sort, and she can't help but match it. "You're cute, you know that? Funny no one thought to add that to the reports."
"Will you be adding it?" he says.
"I dunno, I think it's a fact I'd like to keep to myself for a while." His expression makes her push him unceremoniously to the side and he stumbles, chuckling. "Just don't let it get to your head, you crazy hijo de puta."
Peter mock gasps. "Language, Petra!"
She laughs. "For real, we gotta hang out sometime when these guys aren't hovering over my ass. I was thinking of leaving, you know."
"And I get to be the one to push you over the edge. How exciting."
"Didn't say I'd made my choice yet."
"Tell me, Arkanian, why you here?"
They've reached the lot. No one's touched the place since its mutilation. Petra's eyes climb up, high, higher, as if the Empire still stands and she is trying to see the top. Peter begins to follow her gaze but on second thought drops back down to her face, where he stares with that certain intensity that distinguishes him from every other teenager on the face of the Earth.
Her skin is fair and her eyes are the crisp grey-blue of early morning. Her hair, though, is dark, dark, dark, growing out of its military cut and falling past her ears. Peter would not deny that she is beautiful.
"Doesn't matter," she says softly, as she stares at invisible stars. "Doesn't matter why I'm here. The world's at war, what matters?"
Does she really have such doubt in herself? He's seen the vids. Her talent for strategy is unmatched. He might be proud, but he isn't stupid. "You saved the world once. You, Petra, of all people, can do it again."
She laughs again, shakes her head. "Oh, Peter Wiggin, your flattery may work its magic, but we both know that's not true. I can win the war, of course. But whoever rules the world will fail and we'll have another war and then who will I have saved? Only you could have brought the Earth under true hegemony, Peter. You know that. I know that. But no one else seems to know."
"That's why you came."
"That's not why I came. No one agrees with me. You're too young. Too inexperienced. Too reckless. They keep telling me there's a reason you weren't sent to Battle School."
Peter winces. It's a calm reaction, all considering. "Here to rub salt into an old wound, then."
"You're the perfect candidate for Hegemon. Perfect. What does experience have to do with anything? I'm fourteen and they're making me lead armies!"
She looks to him in despair. "I want peace. Not for me—I don't even know what peace is, and it sounds boring. But for my family. For my baby brother. For the Battle School kids who wanted to come home and rest and live their days without the threat of death looming over them. You're right, Chamrajnagar was an idiot, and he screwed you over. But for Christ's sake, you're a Wiggin. Fix it. Don't hide out in NYC and pretend you weren't the most brilliant political mind this world has ever seen. I didn't even come here to persuade you, but I guess it's happening, all right? And to hell with the feds who are panicking watching the live feed right now. We need you. They can fire me and I'll just stay in your basement until another country comes calling."
Peter is taken aback by her outburst, and is disgusted to find himself pleased about it, too. "I barely know you."
"And I barely know you! But I've read enough of both Locke and Demosthenes to know that you'll do what's best for this world. It might not be for the best reasons, but who cares. Honestly. Who cares."
Finally, he thinks. A person with sense.
"Where were you when I wanted a girlfriend?" he says.
"You never wanted a girlfriend."
"Not entirely true. There was a ten-minute period of my life where I briefly considered it."
"Ten whole minutes! What a waste. Took me ten seconds."
"Having you camp out in my basement while I work on taking over the world doesn't sound like a just-friends kind of situation, though, you have to admit."
Petra stares at him with a straight face for several seconds before she bursts out laughing. "If I weren't the commander of the American militia and you weren't the future Hegemon, I think I would actually consider it."
"I don't know, it sounds like a good match to me."
"Are you the future Hegemon, Peter?"
He looks at her, into eyes that ask so much of him. No one else has ever looked at him like that—not his parents, not his teachers, not Valentine. It's a look that takes his breath away.
He gave up on that dream of hegemony when the Polemarch exposed him and sullied the names of Locke and Demosthenes. It was a devastating blow, and his parents coming out and saying they knew all along and that they were proud of him for trying, that hadn't made it any better. But Petra was right. His youth makes him weak in the eyes of the world, and he has accepted it, instead of proving his worth in some other way.
So he gives her the answer he would have given if she had asked him the question three months ago. "Of course I am."
"Good," she says.
They both know the conversation is over, but neither of them move. This fascinates Peter. Terrifies him. He finds that the rest of the world is dissolving; all he sees is her, and his thoughts nearly cease to continue.
But he grabs ahold of himself.
"See you around, Arkanian."
"See you around."
She remains for a moment before turning and walking away, briskly, down Fifth Avenue, and he feels like he's letting something very important out of his grasp. But what is he supposed to do, take her home to his mother?
Seven seconds gone and he already wants to see her again.
"My basement's always open!" he shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth. His scarf is suddenly threatened to be swept away by eastern winds and he pulls it down just in time to see her wave without looking back.
Satisfied that they'll meet again, Peter stands watching until she disappears into the multitude. He crushes his dying cigarette beneath his boot before turning around.
Time to take over the world.