Jasmeen’s words from lunch had rattled her more than Tesla had first realized. Friends, the girl had called them.
It was a different kind of friendship than she’d ever known. Kiyo had loved her because she was his past, from a time before responsibility and hunger had pushed them both to become something else. Because she was routine and a safe place in a world that threatened them every day. But Sav, Blitz, and Jasmeen—and even Daxton—didn’t know her from before. They knew the Tesla from now, the ghost with white hair and dirt beneath her fingernails, and they liked her.
And how was she repaying their trust and faith? With lies and secrets, she said to herself. Not telling the others the truth in order to keep them close was selfish, the same as it had been the first night she’d met Daxton. In just a few days, their company had become like a bright star in an otherwise empty void.
Jasmeen had stopped and was waiting for an answer. Tesla paused, choosing each word carefully, then said, “You can keep your secrets, Jasmeen, if you let me have mine.”
A smile tugged at the corners of the operative’s mouth, and the look on her face shifted to something else. Respect, Tesla realized, astonished at the change. She watched Jasmeen push forward into the darkness, the girl’s eyes just as shadowed as her own.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE DOOR'S READOUT flashed red: ACCESS DENIED. Tesla watched Blitz’s frown grow more grim, his nose twitching as he tried to input the access code once more. A quick glance at her wristcomm revealed that the Titan Network update was fast approaching.
“I thought you said you had this figured out,” said Jasmeen.
Blitz smacked the hacking device he’d linked to the security keypad. Still red. “I don’t understand. My data says that this was the last code used.”
“Try putting a one at the end,” Tesla offered. “The crews sometimes get lazy and change the codes by only adding an extra digit.”
Jasmeen scoffed. “I doubt Commander Grey would be so careless—”
“Got it,” Blitz interrupted. The light turned green, and they could hear the locking mechanism give way. “Another point to Tesla.”
“When this is all over, I’m going to have a serious talk with every member of the security force on this metal heap,” grumbled Jasmeen.
Tesla slid the door open quietly in case there were any guards waiting just beyond. “Well, it’s a good thing he’s lazy. Any more delays like that and we’ll miss catching a ride back down on the counterweight. Let’s go.”
Their suspicions were confirmed: no guards had been wasted patrolling the emergency fire vent. Since the narrow duct was meant to allow any flames to escape, and not as a viable entrance into the command level, it seemed security had forgotten it altogether. A maze of branching corridors greeted them, and they crouched single file, easing around each corner to avoid any unforeseen cameras.
They dropped down into a hallway, relieved to finally be able to stand upright. But the relief was short-lived. They had underestimated just how labyrinthine the corridors would seem once inside.
Who designed this place? thought Tesla. Every door she found led to storage rooms or cleaning closets. The walls held no sign of a map or emergency escape route diagram, and Blitz’s HDP refused to load information for anything beyond the hatch. They were searching blind.
Tesla shivered as the teeth of anxiety gnawed on her nerves.
Jasmeen slowly peeked around a corner, immediately ducked back, and held her hand up in a fist, signaling Tesla and Blitz to stop. She pointed to her eyes and raised three fingers, indicating how many guards stood in their path. Blitz and Tesla nodded their understanding.
Tesla mirrored Jasmeen’s movements, producing another clear patch of sleeping dose from the pockets of her cloak. Blitz knelt and rolled a small, steel marble into the center of the hallway. Together, the trio closed their eyes through the next part. The hallway filled with the sounds of confused cries and pulse blasters being charged, ready to fire. The marble burst, and bright light exploded into the hallway, glowing red through Tesla’s closed eyelids.
With their vision temporarily blinded, the guards became easy targets. Jasmeen grabbed the nearest one, placing a patch on the neck of a petite woman, while Tesla clumsily applied a dose to the wrist of a boy around her age. Blitz hung on the back of a man who flailed wildly.
“A little help here?” he begged, gripping his arms tightly around the guard’s neck.
Jasmeen swept her leg outward, and the man fell onto his side. Blitz scrambled to his feet and slapped the sleeping dose onto his target’s cheek. Panting heavily, he leaned against a door marked COMMANDER CONTROL ROOM: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The door was unlocked. Jasmeen cracked it open just enough to gauge the situation, while Tesla moved to look over her shoulder. The commander’s office was dimly lit by a myriad of glowing buttons, their lights sparkling along the control panels that encircled the room. A line of holovision screens covered the entire far wall, each displaying a rotating series of security feeds from cameras all around the Atlas. A lone security officer sat behind a large chrome desk, monitoring the footage with a look of bored disinterest.
Jasmeen rummaged in a satchel tied tightly around her waist and retrieved two tiny objects that reminded Tesla of robotic beetles. “Blitz’s design,” she whispered. “With a slight tweak of my own.” She pressed a button on the tech and opened her palm; the mechanical insects responded by skittering through the door and under the feet of the officer, a middle-aged man with a shaved head and thick mustache.
Tesla expected a sound or another flash of light to distract the guard, except... nothing happened. Seconds later, the officer slumped forward in his seat with his face pressed awkwardly against a holovision screen. Deep, even breaths rumbled from his chest, and a bit of drool dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
“What were those things?” Tesla exclaimed.
Jasmeen beamed. “A little invention I like to call Coma Aroma.”
“We are not calling it that,” argued Blitz, crossing his arms. “It doesn’t even make sense. It’s odorless. That’s the whole point—to take out an enemy before the target realizes anything is amiss.”
“It’s a gas that slows the heartbeat and puts its target into a very temporary coma,” Jasmeen said, her frustration growing. “Hence, Coma Aroma.”
“No way. It’s lame. Besides, I thought we agreed on Slumber Scarabs.”
Blitz lifted his eyes in exasperation. “Both of those names are terrible. That’s like calling it the ‘Dozing Dung Beetle.’ It’s not exactly going to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies.”
“Oh, but I like that one.”
“Fine, we can compromise and call it the DDB. Happy?”
Jasmeen blew him a kiss. “Very.”
Tesla scraped the officer’s face from the screen. The man grunted, but remained unconscious. Though the name might need work, she couldn’t deny the results were astounding.
A small blinking light flashed in the corner of the room. “Careful,” warned Jasmeen. “There are cameras in here, too. Don’t raise your masks while we’re inside. Now, let’s hurry and get back before Sav and the counterweight leave without us.”
“Luckily,” Blitz said to himself with a few taps to the screen, “accessing the Titan Network from inside the command center means we don’t need a password.” He glanced to the snoring security officer. “I guess they figured no one could get past the stellar security.”
Jasmeen turned to Tesla, pointing to a computer terminal on the other side of the room. “Can you pull up the live feed of the opera? I need you to keep an eye on the show while Blitz works his magic. Make sure we don’t miss our exit.”
Tesla stepped over the guard, pulled a chair closer, and sat before a dataport console. She clicked through a menu and narrowed down her search until the screen displayed the glamorous faces of the gilded crowd. With a few adjustments, she repositioned the camera’s lens to focus on the stage.
Blitz checked his wristcomm. “Just a few more seconds before the backup disguises our keystrokes. We’ll have complete anonymity, but we need to work fast.”
The full meaning of his words struck Tesla, and her breathing hitched. Complete anonymity. A way to look at any security file without getting caught. How long had she been waiting for this kind of access to the mainframe? Any evidence connected to as high-profile a case as a station worker accused of treason would certainly have been saved in the criminal archives. Tesla sat up straighter, glancing quickly at the others. Both Blitz and Jasmeen were busy discussing security feeds, and the opera still had at least two scenes before the finale.
One search and she could know everything. She could access all the files involving her father, bear witness to the evidence against him, and finally understand what had really happened.
“Well, look harder,” she heard Jasmeen say. “There has to be something on Chen Yao. Trace him back to when he arrived.”
“I did, Meen, and there’s nothing...”
Tesla couldn’t make out the next words, so loud was the thrum, thrum, thrum of the adrenaline rushing through her veins. The temptation proved too great. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up the archive’s search engine.
Nevik Petrov.
Her throat tightened as an unsmiling mugshot of her father, taken just after his arrest, filled the screen. She scanned the list of folders, skimming for a particular set of data: EVIDENCE OF CRIMES.
She hesitated. What would she do if these files had been deleted as well? What if this was another dead end? She clicked, anxious and terrified at what she might find.
A list of documents appeared. At the top was a video file marked: THEFT 24030327. Her fingers froze. After all this time, was she ready for the truth?
Her hand trembled as she clicked the file. The video feed from the opera vanished, replaced by the image of her father, his back to the camera as he leaned over a dataport console. Tesla recognized his shoulders and the way he stooped—the same familiar hunch she’d seen a thousand times as he’d leaned down to listen to her stories. The room around him shimmered, filled with rows of computers.
Not just any room, she realized with a shock. This room. Her father had broken into Commander Grey’s office.
She watched, numb, as his eyes blinked against a sudden light. A blue schematic opened on the screen before him. Lines converged into what looked to be a structure of some sort, possibly a tower, topped with a large cylindrical object. Suddenly, his head shot up, and Tesla jumped, wishing the video had sound.
He hastily plugged in a hackchip and downloaded the schematic from Commander Grey’s computer. The room flashed red as an alarm activated. Her father tore the hackchip from the computer, plugged the device into his wristcomm, and punched buttons to transmit the file. Tesla thought he would run—she wanted to beg him to get away—but a team of guards burst into the room and slammed him to the ground.
Tesla touched the screen where her father lay, electro-cuffs glowing around both his wrists. Tears stung her eyes. It’s true. Everything they said is true. All this time she’d believed he was innocent, believed the charges had been fabricated because he’d refused to budge on some engineering job or had displeased someone with enough power to bring about false charges. But here was the evidence. She’d watched him commit treason, watched him choose some stupid file over his own life—over her.
Her tears gave way to anger, and she punched her hand against the console, returning the screen to the video feeds from the opera. On stage, the beggar prince drew his sword against the usurper king.
Oh no, no, no.
Her heart clenched with terror. It couldn’t be.
“We have to go,” she screamed to the others. “Now!”
Jasmeen’s wristcomm beeped rapidly. “Why is Sav sending an emergency signal?” she shouted, head snapping in Tesla’s direction. “You’ve been keeping an eye on the opera, right? How much longer do we have before the counterweight drops?”
Tesla shook her head. Stupid. She’d been foolish not to pay attention. “I—I got distracted,” she said. She whirled the monitor around, and Jasmeen and Blitz watched, horrified, as the cast of The Beggar Prince joined together at the front of the stage, the scenery raising just behind them. The counterweight would be stories below them now.
The opera was over.
They were trapped.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CERISE TRIED TO WRENCH FREE of his grasp, but Daxton wouldn’t let go, yanking the girl along behind him. Each minute that passed put the others in more danger of being discovered. If the actress wanted the spotlight, that was exactly what he would give her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted, stumbling slightly on her cloudscraper heels.
I have to buy them time. His idea was bizarre at best, and at worst, completely idiotic. Hand in hand, they charged through the lobby, past the wine vendors and merchandisers, to a door painted with the sign CAST AND CREW ONLY. Cademore and Gifford were only steps behind.
Breathless, he turned to Cerise. “You know the prima donna’s part, right?”
“What are you talking—”
He grasped her by the shoulders. “Do you or do you not know the prima donna’s mucking songs?”
“Y-yes, but I—”
“Good. Let’s go.” He thrust the door open, already reaching to drag her along once more, but Cerise stepped beyond his reach.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded, crossing her arms over the bust of her emerald gown. “I’m not going anywhere until I know why you’re in such a hurry.”
Past the door, onstage, the cast took another group bow. Daxton’s heart beat a staccato rhythm against his ribcage. “We don’t have time!”
“Tomasz LaRose, you will make time!”
He ran a hand through his hair until the slicked strands stuck out in erratic tufts. “I need you to make a scene. Please,” he begged, the words sounding desperate to his own ears. “You say you want me to love you and need you. Well, I need you to get on stage in front of everyone... for me.” It was wrong of him to use her emotions for his own gain. He knew this, knew he should find some other way, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Not with Blitz, Jasmeen, and Tesla still up there, easy prey for the first security force guard to come along. Even with the Prime Heir on their side, breaking into the network was a Level One felony. They could spend the rest of their days sentenced to the brig—or worse.
More lives ruined because of me.
Cerise looked flattered, and Daxton felt a new wave of guilt wash over him as she said, “Okay. What do you need me to do?”
He exhaled, relieved. “You, Cerise Rienne, are about to give the most important performance of your career.” Daxton reached for her hand again, and this time she gave it eagerly. Together, they ran through the door.
“JUST RIP THE HACKCHIP out. We have to go!” Jasmeen barked. They were still in the commander’s office, trying to figure a way out, when the slumbering officer began rousing. his groggy face struggling to make sense of the unexpected figures in the room.
“I’m trying,” said Blitz. “If I don’t disconnect properly, it could fry the data. All this will have been for nothing.”
The guard’s eyes shifted to Tesla, and he moved to draw his pulse blaster. With a quick blow, she struck the man against the temple hard enough to knock him unconscious again. “Sorry,” she whispered as he slumped back to the ground.
This was all her fault. She’d let herself get distracted by the past, and now it put their futures at risk. Her father had been executed for downloading files in this very room. Now, she and the others were in danger of the same fate.
Blitz muttered under his breath, slapping the side of the console. “Come on... come on...”
Tesla bit her lip. She wanted to punch a wall, scream, anything other than waiting helplessly for the hackchip to disconnect. Her eyes looked around the room, even
tually landing back on the opera video feed. “Wait,” she breathed to the others.
Blitz’s golden mask poked up from behind the monitor. “What’s wrong now?”
Tesla stared in disbelief. “Daxton is onstage, and the entire audience is listening to him speak.” She watched as the set backdrop once again lowered to the stage. Familiar pink curls peeked from behind the grand drape. “I think he’s buying us time!”
Jasmeen turned her focus back to Blitz and the hackchip. “How much longer until the backup window stops covering our tracks?”
A tick flickered in Blitz’s cheek as he drew a set of calculations in the air with his finger. “Forty-five seconds—but the chip may not be ready to disconnect by then.”
“We’ll wait until the last second, but then we take our chances. A wiped hackchip will be the least of our problems if we’re caught.”
Tesla turned back to the opera feed, just in time to see Cerise plant a kiss on Daxton’s cheek. She pushed her jealousy aside. Had the actress willingly agreed to help them, or was she just doing it to win Daxton’s heart?
What does it matter? her brain screamed back. He’s not yours.
Blitz pounded the keyboard triumphantly. “Done!”
“Everybody out,” Jasmeen ordered, already two paces from the exit.
Tesla didn’t need to be told twice. She immediately leaped over two tables to reach the door. They ran, footsteps echoing in the corridor, as their breathing became ragged gasps through the costume masks. Jasmeen moved as though she would make a wrong turn, and Tesla’s hand snapped around the other girl’s wrist. “No, this way.”
“I remember it being—”
“Trust me,” Tesla begged.
Jasmeen nodded, and they went right just as a security force guard returned early from his shift at the opera.
“Close,” whispered Blitz.
Too close.
They moved quietly now, but still as fast as possible. It would only be seconds—minutes at most—before the unconscious guards were discovered. Just when Tesla wondered whether or not Jasmeen had been right about the directions after all, the vent came into view.
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