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In neon-soaked Sagan City, illegal rooftop beekeeper Mara Koval battles a corporate ultrasonic “Veil” that unravels pollinators and people alike. With a rogue tea-shop AI, a retired conductor, and a street courier, she dives into tunnels to flip the signal, expose the scheme, and bring back the hum under the concrete.
Neon rain stitched the sky above Block 17, fine as thread and tasting of metal on the tongue. Mara Koval wiped condensation from her visor with the back of a honey-stained glove and watched her bees roll out of the hives in a soft amber tide. The boxes were illegal, every wooden edge painted in matte gray to blend with the rooftop concrete. A strip of warm LEDs ran beneath the entrance slots, coaxing life in a city where the sun came filtered through kilometer-high billboards and salted haze.
“Easy,” she murmured, tapping the bone-conduction band behind her ear. The device purred against her skull and sent a low harmonic into the hives. The hum smoothed. Workers bent their translucent knees and poured past her bare wrist, the tiny feet a brief prickling. The sweet scent rising from the frames was a rebellion: orange peel, wild mint, a memory of a time before the towers.
Down on the street, Sagan City throbbed blue and coral, a canyon of glass and moving ads. Trains hissed along the raised tracks. A billboard flickered OmniHarvest’s logo—an elegant seed opening like a metallic flower. Under it, a smiling couple bit into a perfect pear. Mara tasted grit. She knew their pears; she’d tested their synth pulp in a market stall just to see if her bees would touch it. They didn’t.
A door clicked. “You’ll get a citation if they spot you like that, girl.” Baba Lin’s voice had the rasp of a thousand station announcements. The old woman’s coat hung loose, a faded subway patch stitched over the heart. She stepped through the water-slick yard of antennae and planters, her boots magnetized to the steel decking.
“They never look up,” Mara said, lifting a frame. A thousand delicate bodies wheeled around her. “They make laws for the ground.”
Baba Lin snorted. “You’d be surprised what they see when quota runs low.” She held out a thermos. Tea breathed out jasmine. “Warm up. Your hands are shaking.”
Mara sipped, felt heat crackle in her chest. The rain softened, beads shivering on the hive lids. “They flew well today. Hit the service alley rosemary and the garden on 22.”
“How’s Sora?” Baba Lin asked. “Still mopping corp floors and pretending they don’t notice he’s smarter than the machines?”
“He says the greenhouses are like cherry blossom clouds.” Mara smiled, then let it fade. “Says it smells like static. That part I believe.”
A pair of Greywings chirred past, their wings more suggestion than structure, black lenses wet with rain. Mara stayed still until they winked away. She eased the frame back. “I’ve got a night delivery. Noor needs the good stuff for the market.”
“Take the back lift,” Baba Lin said. “The front one stutters between 14 and 15. Last week a boy crawled the shaft to get out. I told the board—no one signed the maintenance tickets.”
“I’ll tell Kettle to push them.” Mara slid the hive lid closed. The bees veered, then settled into a contented coil that resonated in her chest. For a breath, even the billboards seemed to soften. Then the city coughed, lights blinking, and the roof went back to being a roof in the rain.