I do my breathing exercise, slow in through the nose, counting until I feel like I can open my eyes without shattering. Davon looks at me with such simple understanding that my heart aches with gratitude. I love Jaesin, Remi, and Ania, but Davon is my family. The only family I have left. I lift my hand, hesitate, hover . . . then slowly lay it over Davon’s where it rests on my knee and squeeze it tight.
“You don’t hate me?” I ask, though it comes out as a whisper.
He turns his hand over under mine and laces our fingers together.
“I could never hate you, Diz. You know I’ve always got your back. Just the two of us against the rest of the world, remember?”
The pod dips toward the ground, and my stomach swoops along with it. He doesn’t hate me yet, but we’ll be on the ground soon, near the site of the junction station disaster, where hundreds, maybe thousands got ill today, where some even died. Looking at the reality might be harder than he thinks.
Or maybe . . . maybe this is what family is supposed to be. You just . . . count on each other. Forgive. Love.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead on his shoulder, letting myself have this one tiny indulgence.
“I wish you’d been my brother for real,” I whisper, a near-silent confession.
He rests his cheek on the crown of my head, and I feel him smile. “Why can’t cousin mean just as much? Why does a certain mix of blood get to decide?”
And that, more than anything, loosens the knot in my chest, makes me think that maybe, just maybe, things might be okay soon.
The pod comes to rest on the ground and beeps its cheerful acknowledgment. “We have arrived at your destination. The charge is fourteen credits. May I charge this to your primary account?”
“Authorized,” Davon says, and opens the door to climb out.
I sit there, frozen in my seat.
The pod beeps again.
“Thank you for choosing RidePod,” it says, gently chiding. “Have a pleasant evening.”
I don’t budge.
“This pod will be leaving in one minute. Additional charges may apply.”
Davon’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Diz, it’s okay. I’ll be right here with you. I know it’s hard. I know.”
He does know. We were neighbors most of our early lives, right up until the spellplague hit when I was seven and he was eleven. We’d been home with the same baby-sitter, playing video games on Davon’s couch, when the time our parents usually came home passed unnoticed. Ten minutes, and our babysitter had gotten huffy. Twenty, and they’d tried to call my dad, then my mom, then Davon’s moms. Nothing.
Thirty minutes, and the babysitter finally thought to turn on the news to see if there’d been something to affect the traffic.
It was the first-ever coverage of the spellplague, though they weren’t calling it that yet. They were mostly calling it the West City Epidemic, a disease that was wiping out people by the hundreds, then thousands, all in the factory and mining areas or the bridges district. The areas where most of the parents in our neighborhood worked, headquarters of the biggest employers in the entire city. Those who were near ground zero of the epidemic died almost instantly. My dad. Many more died within hours. Davon’s moms. And an unlucky few managed to hang on for days, weeks, or months, only to die at home, in front of their children, with no one around to help.
My mom.
There aren’t many plague cases still around. The mortality rate was so high, and no one can figure out why the ones who survived did. MMC managed to keep new cases from occurring with its maz scrubbing tech, and they contracted with the city to research the new disease, too. There aren’t many people left for researchers to study, though. Remi is one of the few, and they’re required to submit to extensive testing and questioning during their clinic visits to give scientists even the barest amount of data. So far, the research has turned up some techniques for keeping the illness at bay, but not for curing it. Of course, the hope was that there wouldn’t be any new infections.
No one knows why the maz turned toxic after the big quake. But it did, and it killed off half the adults in Kyrkarta, took away parents and grandparents and community leaders and neighbors. It made a lot of orphans.
Some of us more slowly than others.
And today, through my actions, I created more.
“This RidePod will depart in thirty seconds.”
I take one last deep breath, squeeze Davon’s hand, and climb out of the pod. My eyes stay fixed on the ground until Davon joins me, his warm presence at my shoulder the only thing keeping me from calling the pod back and getting the hell out of here. But I stand fast, and bring up the map Jaesin and I used to plan the job.
“Are you ready?” I ask Davon, peeking at him from the corner of my eye. This close to the station, to the worst spellplague disaster in ten years, does he feel differently?
He only nods.
I lead us onward.
Twelve
EVEN THIS LATE AT NIGHT, the junction station isn’t completely abandoned. It sure feels like it, though. We spot three guards over the course of five minutes, silently standing watch over what’s essentially a graveyard, a crime scene, a new tragic entry into the history of the spellplague. If anyone needed a reminder that the plague is still around, that it can still kill people at any time, we’ve certainly provided the proof.
The structure itself is a bombed-out mess, one whole wall blown out on the street side of the building. Black scorch marks line the edges of the ragged hole—the initial explosion from the pressure must have triggered a secondary explosion, something incendiary, to make marks like that. I wonder if that was the cause of most of the deaths today, or if it was the maz? Were all the people who died employees at the station? People who came day after day to work their shift, eat their lunch, chat with coworkers, then head home to family? Or were there people on the street, too, random passersby in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I think I’d rather not know.
The perimeter of the building still flutters with caution-tape lines and shimmers with recently refreshed wards. The guards, when they walk by every few minutes, glow faintly with nullifying armor. The site is still contaminated, then. So much for marching right in there.
Davon bumps his shoulder against mine. “Hey. What are you thinking?”
That I’m a terrible excuse for a human being who shouldn’t be let anywhere near maz ever again?
I bite down on that thought and force my voice to be steady and sure. “I wanted to look at the actual site of the explosion, but it looks like that’s not gonna happen. Not fully decontaminated yet. Follow me.”
Referring occasionally to the map, I lead us back away from the station, sliding like a shadow from one building to the next. The wards and contamination signage end about a block away from the station itself, but we don’t find an opportunity to descend to the tunnels until we’re nearly to the same hatch we used to make our giant horrific mistake. We finally come across a sewer access in the middle of a quieter-than-usual street bordered by factories that only operate during the daytime hours. I send my little drone out for a quick scout, and when it doesn’t find anything, I lead us to the entrance. With a regretful glance at Davon’s pristine black sneakers, I yank the cover off (holy stars, it is heavy—how did Jaesin always manage this so easily?) and slide it to one side to expose the ladder down.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Davon says, pressing the sleeve of his jacket to his nose to cut the ripe scent of flowing sewage.
“I never kid when it comes to crawling around in sewers.” And down I go.
A few long moments pass as I climb down the ladder alone, but then the ring of sneaker on metal sounds above me, rhythmic, as Davon starts climbing, then replaces the cover over his head. Once our feet are on solid ground, I check the map one last time to get my bearings, then lead him deeper into the sewers.
I’ve never been in this part of the tunnels before, yet every step is familiar, h
auntingly so, carrying with it the memory of two years’ worth of siphoning. Jaesin, Remi, and eventually Ania, all four of us, dashing through the sewers in those early days before the first time we nearly got caught, laughing and pretending to shove each other into the sewage, showing off for each other and reveling in our newfound power. Remi was radiantly happy to have access to maz outside school again, and their weaving became more creative and powerful than ever.
The whole thing was my idea, a discovery made during one of my insomniac hacking sessions. It was right after Davon got hired at Maz Management, ironically. I thought I’d test the waters, see how good this IT department he was joining really was. I dove deep, deeper than I thought possible, and what started as a fun exercise to distract my exhausted brain led to the discovery of one little bit of code. The bit that opened the pressure release valves from inside the system instead of outside. That gave precise control and didn’t set off any internal alarms. Way more subtle than most of the other siphoning teams out there. I did the first hack by myself, getting a few vials for Remi’s sixteenth birthday, of all things. It was foolish. Risky. But I had my reasons.
And it worked.
Then it led us here.
Finally I have to fill the silence as we walk, so I explain our usual siphoning procedures. We’re obviously never going to pull another job again, and Davon, at least, is in a position to make sure something like this can’t happen again in the future, that the system will be protected from people like me. I tell him everything, from how we chose which jobs to take to picking our access point and the exact techniques I used to crack the digital security on the hatches and tap points. He mostly listens, making disgusted noises once in a while as we slosh through the sewers, picking our way closer and closer to the junction station. We’ll get as close as we can, right up to the inevitable contamination barrier. I just hope we can get close enough to find what we’re looking for.
Davon asks a few technical questions here and there, obviously taking mental notes for work. Good. If it turns out my job offer is officially off the table, at least I can help somehow. The deeper we get into the tunnels and the more I outline our tried-and-true process, though, the more my frustration rises to the surface, speeding my steps and locking my jaw in a permanent clench.
What happened here? We’re good, really good, at what we do. There’s no logical explanation.
I pull up a diagnostic app on my lenses and look over the mechanical workings of the MMC infrastructure as we proceed farther down, stopping to examine each pressure valve along the way. I need something, anything. The pipes were damaged, or someone was lazy in their maintenance. Some accident that triggered the explosion. Something.
The closer we get, the more the walls around us show evidence of scorching from recent fire. Nothing else.
Did we actually cause the explosion? Did the pressure backup from farther up the pipe affect this area? Did some firaz get forced out and meet with some sort of combustible?
My steps slow, then stop, as we turn a final corner and find ourselves face-to-face with the faint thready glow of a barrier ward just beyond the final valve, marking the border of the contaminated area. This tap point is our last chance. I close my eyes and breathe in . . . out . . . until the hot pressure behind my eyes recedes. There’s still a chance. This one, tiny, final chance.
“Diz, look,” Davon says. His voice sounds odd.
My eyes fly open, and I see it.
Something that wasn’t there on the last tap point, or on any of the points we’ve hit in the past.
It’s like a small box wired directly into the pressure management system, its casing shiny and unscathed, other than the signs of the recent explosion. A new installation, then. What is it, some kind of upgrade? A new augmentation for the system, something to help it better regulate the maz-15? Is it more unstable than the other strains?
I slow as we approach, cautious around the wreckage. It’s eerily quiet; the faint sound of maz flowing through pipes mingling with trickling water and the occasional scurrying rat feet is the typical soundtrack for our jobs. Now, all that remains is the water. Even the rats are unlikely to have survived the blast, and the system of maz pipes sounds . . . empty. Maybe they diverted the flow while they make repairs. I turn to Davon with pursed lips.
“This maintenance point is the kind of place we’d normally tap. We have the pressure release valve, which means we have a way to access the maz without damaging the pipe or setting off an alarm, and each maintenance point has a small digital control system I can splice into. Typically I’d sync wirelessly if possible, or solder in some cables if necessary, then open the valve while Remi directs whatever maz we need into vials for transport. Normally we do a little recon to find a pipe that’s both easily accessible and holds the strains of maz we need, but for this job we were hired to come here specifically.”
I step forward carefully, sinking into the logic of it all, letting my diagnostic app be a shield between me and the damage. Be an investigator, solve the crime, find a suspect, and assign some blame. Someone has to be to blame.
“I keep a constant eye on the pressure readouts as we siphon off the maz, mostly to make sure we don’t drain it so fast that it triggers a leak warning somewhere else down the line. But today the pressure didn’t drop. It spiked. And that should be impossible. How can the pressure increase when you’re removing material from the system? That’s not how physics works.”
“Maybe it really wasn’t related to you at all, then,” Davon says, stepping carefully over a blackened pile of twisted metal. “Maybe something was wrong with the system and it was just wrong place, wrong time for you.”
“But the news said MMC is blaming it on us,” I say. Why can’t I just accept the life preserver he’s throwing me?
Davon snorts. “Of course they are. I love working for MMC, Diz. They treat us well, pay us well, and do a lot of great things for the city. But if they accidentally unleash a second spellplague, and they have easy scapegoats in the form of people who weren’t supposed to be doing the illegal things they were doing anyway? Why wouldn’t they use that? It’s the logical thing to do.”
He steps over to me and rests both hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “Dizzy, even if this disaster wasn’t actually your fault, what you were doing was still illegal and really dangerous. They’re well within their rights to send the cops after you. Especially if it keeps the blame off them. Despite all the people mad about their pricing and restrictions, they’re like saints to a lot of people in this town, with the way they stepped up after the plague. Can you imagine what this would do to their reputation? I can’t even entirely blame them. It’d be hard for them to do the good work they do without that reputation.”
It makes sense. It’s logical, and it ticks all the boxes.
I hate it.
I let his hands fall away and creep closer to the digital control system. The case is charred and the access panel hangs loose on one end, but it’s otherwise intact, and identical to the one I tapped in to earlier today. Identical except for the little box tucked away against its far side, hugging the wall of the tunnel.
My gaze sharpens. I pull out my mini soldering kit and cables and put together the same setup from this morning, then pull my deck from my back pocket and get to work. Davon watches over my shoulder as I query the access node about all the devices currently occupying its ports. It happily retrieves the information I need:
PORT 26—TK421 AUX PRESSURE REG UNIT MODEL 992654821
And there.
Right there.
IF valveID(XS416682:XS416698) status = 1 AND datetime ≥ 07:18:344:11:59:00
THEN call(PORT 26) AND RUN(dir/sub/go.exe)
Translation: if one of the valves along the maz-15 pipe is opened after a certain day and time, then talk to the pressure regulator and tell it to run the file called “go.”
The date listed is the day I took the job while we were at the club.
A suspici
on blooms in my mind.
I hold my breath against the growing dread and dig into the pressure regulation unit to look for the file go.exe. I already know what I’ll find, I know, but I have to have proof. The code spills across my view as I open the file.
leakpoint1 = (GET valveID for (valveID status=1))
IF pipeID(247-24) pressure < 100%
WAIT 30000
TRIGGER(TK421AUXPRU) AND SET(leakpoint1) pressure = 400%
It takes a moment to parse. If the pressure in the maz-15 pipe drops below 100 percent, meaning if someone taps the pipe and causes that slight drop in pressure, wait and see if it’s short, like an automatic triggering. If not, figure out which valve it’s at, trigger the new pressure regulator box they installed, set the pressure . . . to 400 percent. At that pressure, all the maz in the pipe would come gushing out from the tap point, right in our faces.
That was what happened, exactly what happened. The pressure spiked for no reason at all, and venting the other points only helped briefly. That was the surge Remi caught, held, protected us all from, right before the explosion. It was designed to trigger an overload as soon as someone tapped the pipe. And the makeup of the maz in this particular pipe was 60 percent firaz. With that amount of pressure behind the raw maz, it would have ignited in a flash. We would have been killed instantly.
It was designed to kill us instantly.
The only reason we survived was because they didn’t count on Remi, who is far more skilled and powerful than their size or age would suggest.
Someone wants us dead. Us specifically.
Because we were sent here, to the only known source of maz-15. If I hadn’t taken that job, that awful too-good-to-be-true final job, we wouldn’t have been tapping this exact pipe, in exactly the right area to be caught in this trap.
This whole thing was a setup.
My brain whirls into high gear, suddenly a thousand times lighter and flying a mile a minute. I download a complete dump of all the data to my deck, then share the relevant code with Davon.
Spellhacker Page 12