Birth of Chaos

by Elise Kova

  “Well . . . If, if it’s a machine . . . It has to have some kind of logic. Some schematics, I mean. Some way its put together. Maybe I could—”

  She’d needed a breakthrough, and Samson just handed her one. “Wait, yes, that’s it, Sam.”

  “What is?” He looked up from his bobble in horror, as though he’d somehow done something wrong.

  “What if we stop thinking of him as a he and more as an, an it?”

  “Way ahead of you,” Wayne muttered.

  “I’m not talking about rehashing the argument of sentience and the nature of humanity . . . What if we look at the mechanics of him rather than treating him like a human? At the end of the day, he’s based on a program. There’s likely modifications he made to himself in his sentience, but there’s got to be a core—a firmware system that was the foundation for all his learning algorithms. I’d bet that core is Primus Sanguis. Possibly it’s something he still backs up to.”

  “Dollface, I don’t follow,” Wayne said outright.

  “He’s a living, breathing computer.”

  That got them right on board.

  “Are you saying you think you can hack it?” Wayne asked, sounding somewhere in between disbelieving and impressed.

  “Haven’t met a computer that’s kept me out yet.” And having the guise of trying to hack into the Bone Carver would give Jo ample time in the recreation room without question or disturbance. It could also further put her destructive powers to the test. It was win-win all around.

  “But what will you do once you get inside his . . . mind?” Takako asked next. “I don’t doubt you’ll be able to gain entry, but what good will that do in preventing his capture?”

  “Another program maybe?” Eslar offered, and Jo just nodded and stood, mind already whirring with various possibilities, magic tickling like static beneath her skin. She tried not to feel intimidated by it; despite all of the new information she now carried, that magic was still hers. I can control it, she mentally insisted to herself.

  “I can do something, maybe create an illegal subscript that would erase all trackable data . . . Hack into his system and embed it deep enough that it can’t be accessed or removed, just keep him invisible to any outside radar. Or, perhaps because we know his targeting scheme, I can throw in some random other baddies—just enough to throw off the cops so he’s not caught out of profiling.” Jo threw out whatever jargon came to mind. Some of it was sound, some of it wasn’t. But it didn’t matter, as long as the team believed she was working toward various ends. “I don’t know yet, I need some time to work it out still. I’ll come back when I have something more concrete.”

  “In the meantime. . .” Wayne stood, joining Jo and Eslar as the ones standing. “I propose Takako and I will go back to the real world, continue to scope out the police. We’ll report back if we see them closing in on things. But this should buy you some time, Jo.”

  Jo caught his gaze and gave a firm nod. She heard him loud and clear. He was going to keep the team busy as long as he could for her. Jo just hoped that however long that was, it would be enough.

  Chapter 9

  Wood Grain

  Jo practically sprinted out of the common room. Her elongated steps were so hasty that she was nearly tripping over her own two feet.

  Buy her some time. Even if she wasn’t sure where, exactly, her and Wayne stood right now, she knew they were on the same page when it came to their deal, at the very least. But how much time he could buy her, and how much time she needed, could be two different things. Jo found herself trying to calculate how long it would take to close her own Severity of Exchange between them.

  She cracked her knuckles. It felt like a slumbering monster was waking within her, and she’d put a leash on it before it could get the better of her. She’d channel it and use it to her advantage; it wouldn’t be like the desk, an uncontrolled outburst, but a tool for the Society’s undoing. That much, Jo could vow to herself.

  By the time Jo ended up at the recreation room she was breathless from her near-sprint. A small tremble settled on her shoulders with every exhale—purely from the tension that had her back tied into a ramrod-straight position. Yes, she was going to learn how to control this magic of hers and when she did, she was going to use it to break apart the shackles holding them.

  She ripped off her watch, throwing it on the shelf. It nearly tumbled off, holding on by some invisible magic as Jo wrenched open the door.

  The hinges squealed so loudly that it stopped Jo right in her tracks. Her eyes swung left, looking at the metal that had never so much as whispered a sound before. Jo leaned in for a closer inspection, running her hands over the lacquer of the wood. Her fingernail caught on grooves that she didn’t remember being there before.

  Wood grain.

  That’s all it was. Grains of the wood. It’s not like she’d ever really inspected it that closely. It had likely been that way all along and she’d had no cause to notice. Carpentry wasn’t exactly her strong suit either—that fell solidly in Samson’s wheelhouse. And there was no need to trouble the man with her paranoia. No need whatsoever.

  Jo closed the door behind her delicately, all prior vigor lost, and was immediately plunged into darkness. She turned, back against the door, blinking as her eyes adjusted. It took a second (that felt like a whole minute) but eventually she could make out all the shapes in the room. Her chair was poised, monitors where they always were, modems and servers blinked in the background like lackluster Christmas lights.

  “Okay . . . Some light would be nice?” she spoke to no one in particular. As expected, there wasn’t a response. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

  Problem was, Jo had no idea where the light switch was—or if there was even one to begin with. Every time she’d entered the room before the light had been on, waiting. Even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have bothered her; the glow of the three monitors would’ve been enough. But those weren’t on either.

  After another long minute of fumbling in the darkness, Jo’s fingers finally landed on a familiar paddle shape that she’d call a switch. Her hand froze just before she flipped it. A writhing, suffocating feeling crept up on her, clinging to her back. Jo gave a shrug, as if she could physically remove the invisible presence from weighing on her.

  Nothing to be worried about.

  But suddenly she was worried. And she didn’t know why. It was like she was about to hit the timer on a bomb, not flick on the light.

  “You’re being stupid,” Jo insisted aloud. Hearing her own voice grounded her, underscored the overall ridiculousness of the situation. She made a move for the switch.

  And paused again.

  Jo balled her hand into a fist and took a deep breath. She could do this. She would conquer this. Running, walking, or crawling, she would get to where she needed to be.

  The light blinked on, and Jo breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  With just that, everything felt a little more normal. She made a stop at the mini fridge next, pulling out a can of RAGE ENERGY and taking a long sip. As the electric green liquid flowed down her throat, she could feel herself relaxing a bit. In the comforts of the recreation room—surrounded by her plush work chair, caffeine, and tech—she could find a bit of normalcy that eluded her anywhere else in the Society.

  For a little bit, at least, she could pretend that she was still just Jo, the Shewolf hacker with a chip on her shoulder and something to prove. Jo walked over to the chair, falling heavily into it and nearly spilling some of her drink. She raised the can to her mouth again and took a long sip.

  First things first: organize her mind.

  She needed to set up a sub-script to run in the background of the android’s firmware that wouldn’t be recognizable to the AI itself. Yeah, this wasn’t going to be a pain or anything. Whatever language programmers were using now for AI wasn’t something that she kept herself regularly versed in, so hopefully her translation magic worked for computer code as well. If not, she’d need to do
some quick cramming to refresh herself before doing anything else.

  Setting the can down on the desk, Jo leaned forward. She needed to start on a list of things to do—two lists. One list would be for the wish, just enough that if someone called her out she looked like she was actually working. The other would be for her own research on the Society and magic.

  A force that only vaguely resembled static electricity arced between her fingertip and the monitor’s “on” switch. Jo startled as lighting streaked up over the face of the monitor, knocking over her chair as she scrambled to get away. It spider-webbed with a flash, as if the force was dividing to conquer—hunting for every way in through the monitor’s casing.

  With a blink, it was gone.

  The monitor was dark and unassuming. The smell of smoke wafted through the air, singeing her nostrils as Jo inhaled sharply. She looked down at her hand and then back to the monitors.

  It wasn’t the first time that monitor had acted up, she realized; it had issues turning on and staying on during their last wish. But a flicker in the screen and an all-out self-implosion were two vastly different things.

  Jo swallowed so hard she nearly choked on her own saliva.

  She righted the chair and sat with purpose. It’s what she’d wanted. Wasn’t it? Jo had a staring contest with the monitor. She wanted to dismantle the Society and this was proof that she could if she stopped ignoring her ever-increasing magic or writing it off.

  So why did she not feel happier about the fact?

  Holding out her palm, all of her fascination lingered between Jo’s fingers. If she had the power to bring down the Society, then she had to really get serious about learning it—learning to control it. Seeing the Society go up in flames had to be a controlled burn; a wildfire would torch them all.

  Without hesitation or fanfare, Jo clicked on the other two monitors. Like the light overhead they flicked on, oblivious to their now-dead counterpart.

  “Okay, I’m working on two monitors then, it’s fine,” Jo reassured herself. They said that talking to yourself was the first sign of insanity, but Jo was fairly certain she was several signs in already and it made her feel the smallest bit more normal.

  She pulled up her programs and her notepad, diving into her lists. The first shaped up with ease and Jo quickly had a password randomizer beginning to work on the logins she’d hacked in a past life to gain information on Primus Sanguis. It was enough work on that for now, so Jo turned herself to the second list, titled “BTCOTS.”

  It stood for, “Break The Cycle Of The Society” and the title needed work as much as the project itself did.

  This searching she did manually. Jo didn’t throw in random keywords and let software cull and pull sites. She wanted her own eyes on every page. Even if it took longer, she didn’t trust a script to know when something looked promising.

  At first, her queries were random. This or that, chasing down rabbit holes of research that meant nothing and led nowhere—mostly just to introduce her mind to the subject and see how she wanted to approach it. She finally found the right mental pathway when her hands keyed in a query that pulled her from the mindless wandering she’d been engaging in:

  WISH GRANTER SOCIETY CIRCLE MAGIC

  The vague search term provided a list of results Jo eagerly scrolled through. Most of the initial sites were poorly maintained and dated. Jo clicked in to examine the source code, confirming that—based on the bootstrapping used—the sites dated back to the early 2000s.

  She clicked on another, more modern site, but one that had even less information.

  Another click. This time she found a familiar thread, the one that she had frantically scanned in that server barn what now felt like years ago (it very well could have been; time seemed so slippery now). This link had taken her to the Society. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I’d never made that wish and just died, Jo thought darkly. Wayne’s similar muttering about the Great Depression and his time echoed in her ears. How many of them felt the same way she did? How many would welcome the dissolution of the Society, if it meant freedom from their eternity?

  Jo erased the distraction by closing the window, looking elsewhere.

  She tried to think of what else she knew about the Society. There had to be a clue somewhere. The lore of it had persisted through the ages. Why? Why did the rumors of circles and wishes seem to linger no matter how many times the world was rebuilt? It was as if an invisible hand had been guiding it along the whole time.

  The memory of being drafted in the Society prompted another thought: Snow had said she was “selected” because she possessed an ancient magic. Seven lineages. Perhaps there was some clue in the depths of her ancestry? Jo opened up a new window and allowed her magic to enhance the limited Spanish abilities she possessed (far from good enough, according to her extended family) to type in yet another query.

  Her abuelita had always been filled with her own kind of magic. It was in the little things, like how she always knew when Jo needed a break from her mother, or how no matter the level of childhood insomnia, two minutes in her grandmother’s lap, rocking chair shifting beneath them like a soft tide, and Jo was out like a light.

  Simple things like that could easily be explained away, but the woman had greater magic in her: eyes that could see any lie, no matter how well crafted; ears that could hear from one end of the house to the other no matter how old she grew; and hands that could heal.

  In Mexico, they were called curanderas—healers using “folk remedies” when modern medicine wasn’t good enough. Jo vaguely remembered other words like brujeria or witchcraft, but all she knew was that her grandmother had helped her when her throat had gone too sore to swallow, her forehead hot while her body ran cold. The experience was broken up like snapshots now, more like recalling snippets of dreams rather than actual memories, but certain things lingered strong despite the distraction of fever and crackling breaths.

  Strong hands, worn and wrinkled but gentle, rubbing an egg against her forehead, her neck, her chest. Soft words that her eight-year-old ears might have been able to translate if not for how quickly they came and went. The sound of something being placed beneath her bed before Jo gave in and succumbed to sleep.

  The next morning had seen Jo with barely an itch at the back of her throat, her chest clear, and her sweat-soaked skin cooling beneath the fan above her bed. When her abuelita had come to check on her, she had removed a terracotta bowl from the floor and cracked the egg into its depth, an orangey-red surrounding the yolk. The sickness had found a new vessel, she had explained, and Jo hadn’t questioned it; children rarely did. She was better after all and had believed in her grandmother absolutely.

  There was no way of knowing if Jo’s fever had simply chosen that night to break, or if her grandmother had truly embodied some ancient, Hispanic magic, but Jo had grown up believing. In fact, when she’d ended up in the Society, part of her had expected her own magic to in some way be linked to that lineage of curanderas.

  But all of this, the healing, the egg, it had nothing to do with Jo’s magic and how it worked after all. Perhaps the same magic was there, but it manifested differently in each individual? Still, it was the only “real world” tether Jo had to anything supernatural, so she threw out her Spanish query and was presented with varying results. There were slightly different spins on the Society’s lore, but much the same as what she’d found in English, overall.

  Disappointing.

  Jo pushed away from the computer, frustrated at the query and frustrated at herself. What did she think she’d find? A succinct summary of the history of the Society and all its members? None of them existed; they never had, as far as the world was concerned. Even though her abuelita had died almost two years prior to Jo’s entrance into the Society, there was no doubt in her mind that she would have forgotten about Jo, too. Her heart twinged at the thought, rebelling against the idea.

  Small victory, that—knowing that her grandmother had died before she’d h
ad a chance to forget.

  Her fingers landed back on the keyboard. She knew she couldn’t find out anything about the members of the Society and their supposed lineages—those were erased with time and the resetting of the world each of their wishes had wrought. But there was something about the lore of the Society that kept it clinging to reality despite the world being rebuilt time and again. And perhaps that wasn’t the only lore she could find.

  The Bow of the Goddess

  Jo keyed in the name of the book Eslar had given her. Most of the hits were related to a legendary item in some mass-multiplayer online game that Jo had only a vague knowledge of. Scrolling down, she landed on some page listing hunting deities from various cultures. It seemed almost every corner of the world had some kind of lore on bow-wielding divinities. There was no shortage of stories of them striking down man and beast alike. But nothing perfectly resembled Eslar’s book.

  Pushing away from the desk, Jo stood, pacing. The idea of the lore passed down through ages, an invisible hand guiding it—stuck with Jo worse than fresh gum on the underside of her shoe on a hot day. The internet may have forgotten past ages and histories, reduced to just scattered snippets. But Jo had something—someone—that could be even better.

  BTCOTS NOTES 3

  Information overload but repetitive.

  Search term: Divine Wars

  Result: AESIR (Æsir)-VANIR WAR (Norse Mythology)

  Fits the battle for control mold

  Two main pantheons fighting

  Ages of Gods (older v newer) not relevant here

  Merged into one pantheon after war – Vanir’s leaders split & controlled by Aesir

  Definitive weapon was a forged spear

  Compiled all notes to date.

  Cross-referenced Eslar’s book for Age of Magic perspective.