"Me?" I asked. "Everyone else seems to be looking for me. You two, as well?"
"No, but our search did lead us to you, so if you count that…" He shrugged. "We weren't looking for you."
"If I recall, you knew my father was gone."
He nodded. "Once our search brought you to our attention, our Seeker access allowed us to learn more about you. That's when we saw the arrest report ordered for your father and the subsequent report to find and detain you." He pursed his lips in thought. "The odd thing is the reports were written the same day, but they somehow got mixed up so that your father was detained well before you."
"Why is that odd?" I asked, shifting my back into a more comfortable position and rolling my shoulders back to fix my posture.
"The order to detain your father went to the right outpost," he replied. "The one to arrest you, which didn't mention your brothers, by the way. They were only interested in you. Anyway, that order went to an outpost on the far side of the shell. It took several days for them to discover their error.”
"How did they make a mistake like that?" I asked. "That seems very incompetent."
Quentin nodded. "And very un-Seeker like. They're the model of efficiency. It's either a rare case of incompetence in their ranks, or someone didn't want you detained too early."
I stared at him. "That's a large leap of logic."
"We thought the same thing." Quentin nodded at his companion. "Suyef said I was jumping to conclusions when I suggested that a few days before we found you."
"Maybe he's right?" I offered.
"It's possible, but I double checked the reports." He shifted forward his chair, leaning across the table. "The destination codes on the original reports are correct, but when they got to the switching node, someone changed the destination code on your detainment order."
A memory bubbled to the surface. My father working on something he wouldn't let me see just a few days before he was taken.
"You know something?" Quentin asked, eyes on mine, eyebrows raised.
A strand of red fell across my eye and I pushed the hair back behind my ear. "Maybe. It's possible my father had something to do with this."
I squeezed my lips together, blowing air out through them as I dredged the memory up. Across the table, Quentin ducked his head down, smothering a smile behind his shirt. I arched one eyebrow at him.
"Care to share what's so funny?" I asked, waving a hand at him to talk, head shifting slightly to match the motion.
He shook his head, dropping his shirt back down. "Nothing, it's just your thinking face is a bit, well, comical."
I scrunched my nose at him and returned to my thoughts. "Where did you say the switching node was?"
"I didn't, but it's a primary node from the main citadel to your settlement. Your father could have been monitoring it." He spread his hands. "Considering what else you two were up to, that wouldn't surprise me."
My eyes narrowed. "What else were we up to?"
"Stealing water; we discussed this already," he said.
"Yes, I recall you saying you were very good at finding information on the network."
He shrugged. "It's a talent, not one that's been very helpful in finding what we're looking for." He looked up at me. "Then again, you never know what you'll find when you go looking."
I rolled my eyes and waved him to continue.
"Anyway, I told you already that we found what you were doing with the water quotas. Ingenious solution, that one."
"You said that before."
He nodded. "I meant it. Simplest way to get around a massive amount of coding is to alter just enough to get what you need from it rather than try to change the whole thing." He leaned farther forward, beckoning me closer. "Thing is, all you and your father did was undo what someone else had already done."
I leaned over the table. "What do you mean?"
"Someone else beat you two to the punch. They altered the code to decrease the water flow leading to your shortage."
"And when we went in to make our change...” I said, trailing off.
"You simply undid their handiwork." He shrugged with his eyebrows. "As I said, ingenious solution you two stumbled on, and even more so because it revealed the original alteration to the code."
"And this information helped you?" I asked.
He nodded. "A bit. It showed us the code could be altered just so. Once we saw what you did, we went looking for more and found the original changes." He looked down at the floor. "We found that while we waited for your Seeker escort to get enough of a head start before we followed later. It's how we missed the dragon raid."
The thought of the raid brought Maryn back to the surface. A deep sadness welled up inside me, threatening to overwhelm me. To distract myself, I waved a hand at him and took a deep breath.
"You being there would have made no difference."
"Still, I'm sorry we couldn't help save your brother."
I tried to smile at him but failed. I didn't feel it.
"I appreciate the thought." My mind returned to the puzzle he'd revealed. "Why would someone want to steal our water?"
"And now you come upon what we've been looking for," Quentin said. "Well, in part."
"There's more?"
He nodded, but said nothing.
"You going to tell me?"
He shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure I'm at liberty to say. Part of this is for Suyef to decide."
I nodded, sitting upright and craning my neck to one side, then the other, in a stretch. "I understand that much."
Quentin eyed me for a moment, lips pursed and fingers tapping together. "Still, I don't think he would have that much issue with you knowing. Else, he would speak up, right?"
The last comment he directed at his companion, who made no move to respond.
I held up a hand to forestall him. "I don't need to know."
Quentin held his gaze on Suyef, eyes narrowing and his lips pursed to one side. After a moment, he nodded.
"If he had a problem, he'd say so.” He leaned forward and nodded at my brother. “So, I’ll make you a deal. We can help him find what he’s looking for if it exists. In return, you help us do the same, regardless of if we find anything.”
I glanced at Donovan. “You know he’s probably wrong, don’t you? He has no evidence.”
Quentin spread his hands. “So we waste our time looking for information that doesn’t exist. But really, we’re only guaranteed finding out one of two things: their final fate inside the Seeker system or that they aren’t in it anymore.”
“That’s not much” Donovan asked. “And then what do we get out of helping you?”
“Besides finding out for certain what happened to them in that system?” he asked, shaking his head. “That alone I thought would be appealing enough. Plus, you’ll have something that will help you even more with what you were doing before. If you go back to it.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Quentin glanced at Suyef, who shifted but didn’t speak.
“A program that you can use to both insert and extract information from the network,” he whispered, leaning over the table. “To do with as you please.”
My eyes widened. “That’s valuable. Much more than anything we could offer.”
Quentin shook his head, pointing at me. “I saw the coding you and your father were doing. I’m not sure where you learned, but it’s beyond my skill. I’m better at making use of what’s already there. You know, stuff already functioning. Crafting stuff, writing code, that’s not my forte yet.” He nodded at me. “So in that, you’re very valuable to us. And this program we have I think will do exactly what we want it to with a little help from you.”
I glanced between him and Suyef. Next to me, Donovan shifted in his seat, leaning toward me. I held up a hand at him.
“First, why are you here?” I asked. “You know what we’re looking for. It’s only fair we know what you’
re after before we agree to anything.”
“Fair enough,” Quentin said. “We're here for two reasons. One, to find out what is wrong with the network. The water problem is one example of it. There are more." He leaned toward me, his voice lowering. "Beyond that, we're searching for the only man who may have knowledge of how Suyef's father died, and how mine almost perished twenty years ago."
"You think he's here?" I asked, waving my hand around at the outpost.
Quentin shook his head. "Not here at this prison. But on this shell, yes."
“And you want our help to find him,” I said.
“That and the water problem, which you were already working on,” Quentin said, nodding at me.
"So how does getting entangled with us help you figure that out?" Donovan interjected.
“It may not,” Quentin replied. “But it’s worth a shot. And regardless of the result, you get the program.”
Donovan looked at me. “Could you use it?”
I shrugged. “I’d need to see it first to know for sure.”
“We can’t let you see it unless you agree to help us.” Quentin held up a hand to forestall a response from my brother. “And we’ll help you first. So you get the information you’re after before we get ours. Deal?”
I glanced at Donovan. It seemed to me to be the only way to get him to stop this foolish quest of his. So I nodded. A few moments later, we stood in front of the only terminal in the suite: a panel beside the door. Quentin held a device up to the screen and I saw a transfer program activate.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll notice?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The Nomads have been using this thing for decades and never been spotted. So, either they can’t see it or they don’t care.” He chuckled. “Maybe after today they will.”
He entered a sequence of commands and a file structure opened on the panel. He stepped back and waved myself and Donovan forward.
“That’s a prisoner manifest of this facility,” he stated. “I’ll keep looking to see if I can find the same for the other prisons.”
Tapping on the list, I opened a search function and began looking for their names. Donovan leaned close next to me, his lips moving as he read the names. The list scrolled past, once or twice my eyes falling on a name that looked familiar. A closer inspection showed a similar name but not quite one of the names we sought. Sooner than I would have thought possible, I’d reached the end of the list, having searched for every possible variation of their names I could think of.
“Any luck?” Quentin asked from behind me.
I shook my head. “They’re not on this list.”
“Well, that only means they weren’t here,” he said, holding the device up to the panel again. “Try this one. I think it’s a manifest from the prison directly opposite this one on the other side of the shell.”
“Or they were removed from the list,” Donovan suggested as he leaned in to look at what Quentin had found.
“Thought you believed they were here?” I muttered as I scrolled through the list.
He shrugged. “I didn’t say here. I said somewhere in their system. Here is just the closest to our settlement.”
Soon, we’d finished that list. Quentin scanned his device, shaking his head.
“As far as I can tell, that’s it for manifests,” he said. “If they have more prisons, they aren’t on the books.”
“Or just not accessible from here,” Donovan muttered.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Or they never came here at all.” He looked over at me but I shook my head at him. “I’m not saying they weren’t taken somewhere, but if I’m doing this, I want to know you are open to the possibility that you’re wrong and they’re gone.”
He nodded, but said nothing. I stared at him for a moment, then looked at Quentin.
“So, they weren’t here or at that other prison, as far as we can tell,” I stated. “Can you find any other place they might have been taken?”
“Maybe, given time,” he said, pursing his lips as he stared at the device. “Colberra is a huge shell and that city dominates it. There are a lot of places you can hide a prison.” He looked up at me. “Just takes a little time, is all. We’ll find an answer.”
He went back to sit at the table and work. Donovan and I moved next to him and looked over his shoulder.
“The program I’m using was invented to insert data to be found in a specific facility.” He looked up at me. “It took some trial and error but I found a way to use it to do the same thing elsewhere. So, I’m trying inserting requisition requests for supplies to be sent to Seeker facilities that house a lot of people.”
“How will that help?” Donovan asked.
“Because I’m not specifying which ones to send it to,” he explained. “I’m wording it as such that the supplier will be required to confirm which facilities they send what to and how much.”
“And from that you get the names,” I said, nodding as I watched him tap at the screen. “Did you include flaggers for receipt locations?”
He snapped a finger at me. “Good idea, so we know where the people are that open the file.”
“If you attach a form to the request that they have to fill out with the data you request, you can embed the same thing in that,” I suggested. “If it makes it past their firewall unchecked, you could see where the responses go as well.”
Donovan stood up and looked at me. “Why wouldn’t they detect it?”
“Because Seekers believe the Network is theirs and nothing is on it they don’t control,” Quentin stated, never moving his eyes from the screen. “So, they don’t question what comes to them on it. At least, not at the level this will be read at.” He tapped the screen. “There, it’s done. Now we wait.”
“How long until we know it worked?” Donovan asked.
Before Quentin could answer, the lights flickered off, plunging us into darkness.
#
"Wait, the lights turned off?" I asked, interrupting Micaela's narrative.
"Completely dark."
"Isn't that impossible in an Ancient facility?" I asked.
She nodded. "Which is why even Colberrans, with all their misplaced hate for the Ancients, haven't been able to wean themselves from it. Ancient technology is nothing if not dependable."
"Misplaced hate," I repeated her words. "Why do you say that?"
She shrugged. "They are misinformed, as most are in this age beyond the dragon circles. Even the Nomads, for all their knowledge of what goes on down here near the core, have lost much of what was recorded about the distant past."
"I've done my own work into that field of research," I muttered, shaking my head. "The data just isn't there anymore. Even in a computer as powerful as the Network."
"Isn't there at all?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at me.
I opened my mouth to retort, then paused. "You know something I don't?"
"Merely that, if you look over your notes, you'll remember why Quentin and Suyef were even on Colberra in the first place."
"The Network wasn't working right, they claimed," I said without looking. "Or they just thought it was because they couldn't find the data they wanted to."
"I once believed it was that simple," she whispered, eyes moving to stare out the window. "That the data was just gone."
"What changed your mind?"
She chuckled, a slight thing that only just shook her body. "I saw a ghost."
Chapter 14 - Attack
The room went completely black for several seconds before something bright flared up, slicing through the dark and hurting my eyes. After my vision adjusted, I looked around. Suyef held a staff in hand, one end swallowed in fire.
"Do I want to know where you had that hidden?" I nodded at the staff.
He shook his head and shifted around the room, holding out his makeshift torch. "Something's wrong."
"You think?" Donovan muttered, moving to st
and next to me. “Is that because of us? Did they find out what we were doing?”
“I doubt a simple search would take out the power,” Quentin stated.
He remained where he was at the table. Suyef stepped near the door, the light from his torch casting ominous shadows across the walls. The door remained sealed at his approach.
"So much for a power outage freeing us," Quentin stated.
Suyef moved around, torch shifting up and down as he searched all around us.
"What are you looking for?" Donovan whispered.
Suyef held up a single finger to silence him. My brother shot me a glare which I only half saw in the flickering light. The Nomad continued his investigation. As he did, a sound tickled at my hearing. I turned my head toward Quentin.
"Did you say something?"
He shook his head at me. I turned around to face the door, eyes focused on the entry, head cocked to one side. Donovan moved close to my side.
"What is it?"
"Shh," I hissed, waving at him.
He grumbled then fell silent. I cocked my head the other way and closed my eyes. The sound hung just audible to my ears, flitting past like a soft breeze tugging at my braid. I stepped toward the door and heard a louder burst, a pop that split the air.
"I heard that," Quentin said, shifting behind me.
Everyone froze where they stood, heads turning this way and that. I stepped closer and heard a faint hum.
"Suyef, put out the light," I whispered.
Darkness plunged down around us. With the sound of the flames gone, I heard only breathing, my heartbeat, and a slight bit of static. I turned my head back toward the entrance and saw a thin glow emitting from the wall panel beside the entry.
"Is that panel on?" Quentin shifted in the dark, but I didn't hear any footsteps.
"I think it might be." I stepped toward the dim source of light.
As I did, another pop of static echoed through the room, accompanied by a faint echo that sounded like a voice.
"Dange..." the voice said.
"Something is very not right here," Quentin whispered.
"...nger..." The sound danced past my ears, the last letter dragged out and distorted.
Rise: Tears (Future Worlds Book 1) Page 13