Spellhacker

by M. K. England

  Part of me wishes Jattapore would wash right off the map. How are we ever supposed to get back to normal when my friends always have it as their backup plan? What even is normal anymore? A few days ago, they were on the cusp of moving to Jattapore for good. Then I thought maybe I’d gotten them all back, with the money from the job. But a few hours ago they were ready to flee town without me.

  One way or another, they’re going to leave eventually. Maybe I should recalibrate my sense of normal once and for all. It obviously shouldn’t include Remi, Jaesin, and Ania. I need to stop hoping for change if I have any chance of getting over this.

  I resist the urge to spit at the map, and move on.

  I follow the wall around the stacks until I reach the entryway again, where, tucked away in the far front corner, a little office is piled high with crap and labeled PROFESSOR SEANAN KAYMA, SENIOR ARCHIVIST. The room is dark, the lock intriguingly complicated for a room inside another already-secure room. The locks are digital, so I pull out my deck and go to work. Surprisingly tough for a professor’s office, but nothing compared to the MMC security I’m used to cracking. It takes less than a minute for the door to yield to me.

  The lights in the office come on automatically as I step in, easing smoothly to full brightness rather than flash-blinding me. The place is an utter mess. Three different cups of coffee are clustered together next to the built-in deck screen on the desktop. All three are different levels of partially drunk, and one is topped with a thin film of greenish mold. I wrinkle my nose and step behind the desk, moving slowly so as not to disturb anything or trip on the piles everywhere. A photo of Seanan Kayma and what I assume are her husband and kids watches over the coffee cups with bright smiles, all a bit slouchy and disheveled, but brilliantly happy.

  The cups and the photo claim the only part of the desk not completely buried under books and papers covered in cramped, barely legible handwriting. I’ve only seen physical books a few times in my life, and no one uses loose paper much anymore—except this woman and Ania, apparently. I can’t judge her much, since my own desk looks much like this if you replace books and paper with tools and parts, so I have to assume she has a system and knows where everything is.

  I sit down at her desk and access her terminal, taking some time to dig through her files and emails. Her digital records are fortunately much more meticulously organized than her physical ones, but dreadfully boring. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but a cursory search of the computer returns no hits for maz-15, and way too many hits for Maz Management Corporation, spellplague, and spellsick. Nothing useful. I look up from the terminal and am about to stand—but there, in the opposite wall, in exactly the place where you can see it if you glance over the top of the screen, is a seam. It’s mostly blocked by another pile of books, but when I get closer to peek behind, there it is: a small, digitally locked door in the wall, barely noticeable unless you’re looking from the right angle—and just large enough to hold a single book.

  Curious.

  The security on this lock is much stronger than anything I’ve encountered to this point. It’s a challenge, a fun one, and I happily sink into the work, zoning out totally until a notification jolts me with its sudden appearance.

  (private) Davon: Everything going okay in there? You going to need a ride?

  What are you doing, anyway? I know I said I wouldn’t ask, but the curiosity is killing me. What does the archive have that can help your situation?

  I blink the notification away with a scowl. I swear, if it’s not Ania, it’s him. They have the worst timing.

  I work at the lock for another twenty minutes over wireless sync—hardwiring isn’t an option here, not without doing noticeable damage to the casing—and I’m about to despair when it finally whirs and releases.

  Victory.

  Inside is nothing more than a few handwritten letters. Who writes letters anymore? All are dated from within the last year and contain scrawled formulas and observations, but the thing that catches my eye is “maz-15.” It’s mentioned in every letter. I flip one over, looking for a signature. Who’s writing to the archivist about maz-15, and why letters? Untraceable, I guess, but—

  I gasp aloud, then clap a hand over my mouth.

  Yours truly,

  Aric

  I rush to the doorway of the office to double-check my memory, and sure enough, there it is. An enormously long sign hangs from the ceiling just in front of the stacks, in clear view of every single person who walks through the door: The Professor Aric Silva Memorial Archives.

  Not so much of a memorial, I guess.

  Holy. Shit.

  I triple-check the dates on the letters, but they haven’t changed. The most recent one is from two weeks ago.

  I’ll bet anything this is from THE Professor Silva. Remi’s ultimate hero. Dude literally developed the tech that scrubs contamination from maz for MMC, basically saved the world in the middle of the worst maz crisis ever, and he’s not dead.

  We need him.

  I run out into the main part of the space, pulse pounding in my ears. Remi is going to flip.

  “Remi, stars, you won’t believe—”

  “Diz, I have to tell you some—”

  We nearly collide in the middle of the room, both clutching papers to our chests.

  “Remi, you’ll wanna hear this first—”

  “Diz, this is huge, I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  I shut my mouth and take a step back, looking up from the papers for the first time. Remi is deathly pale, their eyes wide and frightened. Whatever it is must be bad.

  “You go first,” I say. “Are you okay?”

  They shake their head, biting their lip, their eyes squeezed shut.

  “I found a doctoral thesis supervised by Professor Silva from eight years ago, right before he died. It was ordered to be deleted, so there’s no digital record of it. But the archivist had a printed copy hidden behind the service desk. They were studying maz-15.” They pause for breath, then finally meet my eyes. “Dizzy, they proved conclusively that maz-15 is what makes people ill. Maz-15 isn’t new—it’s the spellplague. And their research was censored by MMC.”

  Oh shit.

  “Maz-15 is the contaminant that was released underground after the first big earthquake ten years ago,” they continue, flipping through the papers in their hands. “It’s attracted to other maz and binds to it, kind of like magnaz, so it just . . . got into everything. They still couldn’t figure out how exactly it acts on the human body except that it enters through the maz receptors, but—”

  They break off and tip their head back, a few tears leaking from the corners of their eyes.

  “His doctoral student got ill and died from the spellplague. Because of his research.”

  My stomach lurches, and I take a step back away from Remi. Their eyes flash with hurt, but they just shake their head.

  “I was so excited, Diz,” they say. Their grip tightens on the bound manuscript. “When you told me there was a new type of maz, I thought, how lucky that I get to live in a time when there’s a discovery like this! I can’t wait to get my hands on it and study it myself.”

  They laugh bitterly, and it’s like a knife in my gut. I put Remi directly in contact with the cause of their illness. I took that job, I made everyone do it. After what the spellplague did to them, to my family, I turned around and made everything worse.

  I can’t talk about this.

  “So, wait,” I say, trying to salvage the situation, managing to sound almost normal. “What do you mean, they censored the research?”

  Remi sighs. “Like I said, they wiped it from the records, but also, just look at the timing. This was right before Professor Silva was declared missing, then dead. And now there’s us. We discover maz-15, and we’re immediately targets for an attempted murder.”

  I shake my head. “What I don’t understand is why they don’t want this public. Shouldn’t they want everyone to know that maz-15 causes the
plague? The more people who know the cause, the more people can work on a cure, right? The scariest thing about the plague has always been the unknown factor. Where it came from, what exactly it was, you know?”

  Remi shrugs. “I mean, I kind of get why, if it was eight years ago. Even two years after the plague, everyone was too terrified to even walk into a room with sunnaz-enhanced lights. If it had gotten out that the plague was caused by a new type of maz, I’m not sure anyone would want to touch maz ever again. Bad for their booming post-plague business, once they got it rolling. You know how I feel about MMC, but even I can see the logic there. But why keep it up after all this time? After they started to filter and sell clean maz, proved it was safe?”

  A horrible image plants itself in my mind. “Remi, imagine if our last job had been real. If some rando really had discovered maz-15 and hired us to get some, then used it to make people ill?” My stomach lurches at the awful possibility of what could have been. “After two years of tapping pipes all over the city, we only found it in one place. At least while MMC controls the knowledge of it, they can keep it contained. Killing to protect the secret still seems too extreme, but . . . I don’t know.”

  There’s a long pause filled with the rustling of pages as Remi flips to the back of the thesis document.

  “There’s a handwritten list of names in the back here, too, but I don’t recognize any of them. Maybe one of them would know more?”

  I glance at the list, then make a few queries to my deck via subvocal command. Nothing useful, though. Except . . .

  “They’re all ex-MMC scientists, and they all disappeared around the time the professor did. I mean, officially they resigned and moved away, but that’s kind of suspicious.”

  Remi, who’s been taking a series of photos of the thesis with their smart lenses, closes the folio and goes behind the service desk to put it back. “Definitely suspicious. MMC probably killed them all, you know? They probably killed Professor Silva and every one of his colleagues, then covered it up. At this point I wouldn’t even be surprised.”

  I raise an eyebrow and waggle the papers in my hand. Finally, something good to focus on. I seize the chance like a life preserver. “Actually . . .”

  Remi pops up from behind the counter and plants their palms on the desk. “What is it?”

  “Letters,” I say, sliding them onto the desk in front of Remi. “The archivist, Professor Kayma, has been writing back and forth with someone about maz-15. Someone named Aric. The most recent letter is only two weeks old. I found it locked in a vault in her office.”

  Remi lets out a startled laugh. “And you think it’s Professor Silva?”

  “One way to find out. This archive is full of stuff with his handwriting, yeah?”

  Remi holds up a finger and whirls around, then comes up with one of the boxes they’d pulled from the stacks. It’s labeled A.S. LAB NOTES—FRAGILE in giant bold letters.

  “One of the benefits of being in an archive,” Remi says. “They keep everything.”

  They lift the lid carefully, pull out a single sheet of paper, and lay it out on the desk for comparison. The resemblance is obvious. Identical.

  “He’s alive,” they say. “And I can still meet him. Professor Silva really is alive!”

  Remi’s head whips up, their eyes shining. “He could tell us everything.”

  “And he escaped when MMC wanted him quiet. We could probably use his expertise about that too.”

  Then Remi wilts, their forehead hitting the desk with a thunk. “But how are we going to find someone who even MMC can’t find?”

  I grin and shuffle through the papers, producing a plain envelope. “There’s a return address. It’s just a P.O. box at the university in Jattapore, and the name on it isn’t his, but it’s a place to start.”

  I swallow hard, low-level panic filling my veins at the thought of our next step. I swore I would never do this, but the universe has left me no choice.

  “Looks like you’re going to Jattapore after all. But this time, I’m coming with you.”

  Their excited smile flickers, then fades at that last bit, and I can practically see them remembering they’re supposed to be mad at me. Ugh. Always one sentence too many. I glance at the time—how have we been here all night?—then open our group chat with a sigh and change the name.

  Epic Group Chat: We are GOING TO JATTAPORE BITCHES Edition

  You: Ania, buy us four tix for the 7 a.m. train to Jattapore

  Jaesin: What, did you have a change of heart or something?

  We running?

  Ania: What did you find?

  Remi: a lot

  like, both literally and spiritually A LOT

  You: Grab our bags and meet us at the old elementary school near the station

  I’ll send over the photos of what we found so you can recover from having your minds blown by the time we get there.

  I look up to share the last bit with Remi out of habit, but as soon as our eyes meet, they look away.

  Damn it.

  Twenty-four hours ago, I walked out. Just said “Bye forever,” and left.

  Things will probably never be the same.

  How do you come back from something like that?

  Can you?

  Sixteen

  THE OTHERS LAUGHED AT ME for my disguise yesterday, but they’re eating their words now.

  While we finished up at the archive, Jaesin and Ania dug through Ania’s wardrobe and cosmetics for something to hide us all long enough to make it onto the train. We’re using concealment spells, obviously, but we’ll have to walk past several security guards, including one right as we walk on the train. If anything draws their attention enough to break through the concealment, we’ll be glad for the extra layer of protection. Can’t be too careful when you’re wanted by the police.

  Remi is easy enough. Plain jeans and a World of Battle Tournament X T-shirt (Ania swears she has no idea where it came from), their dark hair parted and slicked back, a cheap deck loaded with video games in their hands, and they’re a totally forgettable nerd buried in their virtual world, barely aware enough to hand the security guard their ticket. Ania generally doesn’t stand out too much in her everyday clothes, though it can’t hurt to tone down her utterly polished beauty. She opts for an outfit similar to Remi’s, though it obviously pains her to wear her workout sneakers outside the gym.

  Jaesin, though . . .

  It takes everything in me to hold back a grin as we walk through the halls of the abandoned elementary school, Jaesin slouching along in the lead. Ania set her sights on him earlier, and she made good use of the time. She worked oil into his hair so it looked limp and greasy, lined his eyes in dark kohl, and dressed him in all black from head to toe, right down to black painted fingernails peeking out from his too-slim black hoodie sleeves. It started out as a disguise, but I think by the end it turned into some kind of revenge. For what, I don’t even want to know.

  I prance up behind him in my flowing pastel shirt-and-skirt combination (coming off as soon as we’re on the train) and lean close, waggling my fingers. “You are no longer Awesome Strongman McDad Friend. I now pronounce you Super Edgelord McRaven Dark.” I fold my hands together and give a little bow, solemn. “It is so.”

  Jaesin glares at me, then walks faster, pulling away. I look to Remi and Ania, hoping Jaesin is just keeping in character, but find the same annoyed stares from them.

  Even naming jokes aren’t working. They really do hate me now.

  Maybe they’ll always hate me, and tagging along for this ride is pointless.

  “I still don’t understand,” Ania murmurs, smoothly ignoring me. “If the professor were alive and in Jattapore, there’d be some trace on the net. No one can truly disappear, right?”

  “True.” Jaesin glances over at her with a small smile. Apparently he is still capable, after all. “Unless you go off the grid entirely.”

  Ania shakes her head. “Is that even possible? Even toilets are networked t
o check contents for disease markers now.”

  “It wasn’t too uncommon, before the plague,” Jaesin says, his eyes lighting up at the memory of his earliest childhood. Has he never told Ania about it? I don’t know what happened while they were dating, but there are some weird gaps in their knowledge about each other.

  I think back to when Jaesin first came to the group home, when we were all only seven or eight. I made fun of him because he had an accent and had never used a deck or smart lenses before. What can I say? I was even more of an asshole as a child. Remi was the patient one, showing him how everything worked. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to admit that to Ania.

  Jaesin continues. “Out in the Freelands between cities, it used to be possible to live a pretty great life. My parents moved out of Kyrkarta after they got married, and I was born out there. Ambient maz levels were really low, so far from a big source like the ones cities are built around, and lots of families couldn’t afford smart lenses and other tech, or just didn’t want to use it. We just did everything by hand and kept everything local. I think some people were there specifically because it made them hard to find.”

  His face falls, and he blinks several times in quick succession. “Once the plague started spreading, though, even our trace amounts of maz turned toxic. MMC sent evacuation teams to the outland towns, but they only had room to take the kids. By the time they went back for our parents . . .”

  He swallows hard, and Ania lays a hand on his arm, warm brown fingers tracing soothing patterns on his olive skin.

  “Anyway,” he says, pushing past it, “it’s impossible to live out there without maz now, for wards and barriers and all that, but if anyone could do it, Silva could, right?”

  Remi hums their agreement. “I mean, he literally invented MMC’s maz scrubbers, so yeah, I imagine he could figure something out.”

  “Nerrrd,” Jaesin says under his breath, and Remi gives him a none-too-gentle shove.

  “But then he could be anywhere,” Ania whines as we pass a fading bulletin board still decorated for a lesson on weather with a calendar from six years ago.