GHOST PHONE

PROLOGUE: The City That Eats Its Children Neo-Nairobi never really sleeps. It just breathes slower at 3 a.m. Neon and exhaust drift over everything. Delivery drones thread the smoky air all night, the way they have for years now, nobody looking up anymore. And somewhere far under the streets deep enough that the ground itself stays warm servers run around the clock, a second heartbeat nobody mentions out loud. From above, it could pass for a dream. Glass towers catching the first light. Solar panels stacked across every roofline. Holographic billboards the size of football pitches, cycling through the faces of people who've never once thought about rent. Sky-bridges stitching the wealthy districts together like silver roads laid across the clouds. From below, it's a different city entirely. From below where Zane lived, where Zane had always lived it looked less like a city and more like a mouth. One that never quite finished eating. He was sixteen the morning he found the phone. He had no idea yet what it actually was. Not a device, not really more of a key. He had no idea that underneath all that glitter and glass, something mechanical had been sleeping for years, waiting for exactly the wrong person to wake it up. He didn't know that one careless tap of his thumb would be enough to start all of it moving at once. He didn't know a man in a penthouse forty floors above the smoke had been quietly emptying the city for years slow enough, careful enough, that it never once looked like theft. And he certainly didn't know that in thirty days his own face would be on every screen in the country. Wanted. But that morning, he was just a boy in boots with holes in them, picking through someone else's garbage, about to have his whole life come apart in his hands. This is how it started. CHAPTER 1 Scrap & Static Every morning Zane wakes up to the smell of burnt copper. It is not the smell of food or the wind coming from the flats. It is the smell of technology baking in the sun. Zane has been waking up to this smell since he was nine years old. At some point the smell stopped being a smell and started being a feeling. It is a feeling like being home.. Home is not a word that Zane is very familiar with. Zane walks through Jua like he owns the place. He knows what he is doing. He picks things up tests them and then discards them or puts them in his pocket. He finds a holopad with a screen that still works. He also finds a delivery drone that is missing an arm. The battery from the drone is worth two hundred shillings. He can sell it to Mama Okoye without any problems. Then he finds a roll of fiber-optic cable. It is the kind that the government uses. This kind of cable is not supposed to be. Zane coils it up slowly. Puts it in his vest pocket. He is careful because the cable belongs to someone "Zane!" someone calls out. Zane looks up. Dex is standing on top of a pile of scrap. He is fourteen years old and still growing. He has goggles on his face. Dex looks like a baby bird that is trying to fly.. He is good at catching things. "Drone sweep in twenty!" Dex says. Zane does not panic. Panicking is what new people do. Zane turns northeast. Listens. He can hear the hum of a Vane Corp security unit. It comes every day at six-fifteen. The unit is looking for hardware from the Upper District that has made its way here. Zane does not run. Running makes noise and noise sets off sensors. Zane goes low and slow. He hides behind a server rack and stays still. The drone flies overhead. It is close. Zane can see the logo on the drones belly. It is a V inside a white circle. The logo is clean and crisp. The drone moves on. Zane lets out his breath. Then he sees something. It is sticking out from under a solar panel. It is a corner of glass. The glass is smooth. Has no scratches. In a place where everything is broken or rusty the glass looks new. Zane should have kept moving. His hands do not listen to him. He picks up the glass. It is a phone. The phone is thinner than any phone Zane has seen before. It has no charging port and no brand mark. It just has a flat black face and three words etched into the back: PROPERTY OF M.V. Zane freezes. M.V. He knows what it means. He does not need to think about it. He just knows. It is Marcus Vane. Zane looks around the yard. Dex is gone. The drone is gone too. No one is close. Zane puts the phone in his pocket. It is the pocket that he keeps close to his chest. It is the pocket for things that he does not want to trade. Zane stands up. Walks. The phone is warm, against his ribs. It is humming.