***
When I am done getting my stuff, I head to the common area to meet Ethan and Ember. Most of the Hollows are still asleep. Nobel and Journey are on the half-pipe, saying good-bye it looks like. Ink Spot is doing some rifting stripes for Chernobyl, who rifted back twenty minutes ago. He looks like he got into some gnarly stuff.
“Hey, Chernobyl,” I say, walking over to them. “What happened out there?”
“Aw man, it was like a storm out there. It was the first time that anyone had rifted into the American Civil War. We weren’t taking anything this time. Gloves wanted us to follow the train that was carrying the Union’s payroll, all in gold of course. When we got there, most of the soldiers were gone. In their place were these little dome-headed, geared creatures that tried to take us out.”
I look down at my leg. “Those are Gear Heads. One of them sawed off my leg.”
“Those guys did that?” Chern asks. “I had no idea, sorry.”
Ink Spot slaps him on the neck to indicate that he’s done. Chern flinches. “Well, I got to go,” he says. “Gotta return this stuff to the lab. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay,” I mumble, staring at my geared prosthetic.
I walk to where Nobel, Ember, and Ethan are sitting. They are congregated in the same spot we were sitting earlier.
“Hey, something is going on. Chernobyl said he ran into a bunch of Gear Heads during a mission.”
“Not a surprise. The Peacekeepers can track Contra. That’s how they find you guys in the stream,” Ethan says.
“Yeah, but we’d never rifted there before. They predicted where we would be and got there before us. That team walked right into a trap.”
Ember puts her hand on my shoulder. “Lex, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but has it occurred to you that your friends are stealing? The Peacekeepers were trying to prevent them from taking something that didn’t belong to them.”
I shrug her hand off. I’m about to say something nasty when Ethan cuts me off.
“I’m worried more about the how than the why right now. This means they’ve somehow figured out how to use Tesla’s predictive algorithms to predict where the Hollows will strike. This will make it very hard for you and your friends to smash and grab. They could have these things waiting for you anywhere at any time. Always one step ahead.”
“True,” Nobel agrees. “So our immediate problem is finding a way to disable several Gear Heads at a time. Like some sort of electromagnetic pulse?”
Ethan nods, “That might work. You could try to isolate the correct harmonic resonance to shatter their glass domes—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I cut them him off. “We’re wasting time. We are going to save Stein.”
“All right,” Nobel interrupts. “Let’s go. Here, take these.” He hands each of us a small green pill.
“You got the Dox?” Ember asks, rolling the Contra between her fingers.
“Sure thing,” I answer, tapping my pack.
“What are these?” Ethan asks, holding the green pill up to the light like some rare jewel.
“This is how we rift,” I answer. “No fancy tech and no practice missions. Take this baby and you’ll be hooked on rifting for life.”
Ethan looks to Ember, who shrugs. They both remove their Tethers and toss them on the table.
“Okay.” She pops the capsule in her mouth. “Let’s do this. We just rift from right here?”
“Yep. Claymore set the date and time of the mission in these capsules so we can show up at the right time, just before Stein falls. So just pop the pill and hold on tight.”
I adjust my jester’s hat, put the capsule on the back of my tongue, and swallow.
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