Spellhacker

by M. K. England

  My gaze drifts to the chat icon in the far corner of my vision. I bite my lip, an idea forming despite the wave of fierce protectiveness trying to kill it. I don’t want to involve Davon in this any more than I already have. This isn’t his mess. He’s already risked his neck enough for me.

  But this is fate-of-the-world-level stuff here. There’s really no choice at all. Besides, he’d want to be asked. I owe him the chance to help.

  I blow out a slow breath and resign myself to the inevitable.

  “We have someone on the inside who can help us, actually,” I say.

  Jaesin’s eyes narrow. “Are you sure? Will Davon really help us go against his employer?”

  I pause, letting scenarios play out in my head. Will he? He loves his job, and he’s dedicated to doing his best work for them. He recently got promoted, and it meant a lot to him.

  But he went down into the tunnels with me. He wanted the truth almost as badly as I did. And he cares about me. He’s the only family I have left. If it came down to me versus MMC, he’d choose me every time, hands down.

  I nod decisively.

  “Yes, absolutely. Once I tell him what they’ve been doing and what we want to do about it, he’ll be on board. He always has my back when it matters. He’ll be horrified once he learns what MMC has been doing.”

  “Okay. That gives us a starting place, at least.” Jaesin zones into his lenses for a moment, then reports back. “There’s a train back to Kyrkarta leaving in two hours. If we hurry, we should be able to catch it.”

  The professor calls a tangle of maz to hand and spins it quickly into four concealment spells, one for each of us. He passes them out, then summons more maz to refill Ania’s ware and the emergency stash in Remi’s necklace. He even disables his traps in the wasteland. How generous. Jerk. I’m still mad about the unicorn.

  Once we’ve collected our things and are ready to go, the professor lays his hands on Remi’s shoulders.

  “I watched you cross the wasteland, you know. You’re incredibly talented. I truly would be honored to work with you, if we all come through this alive.” The professor zones into his lenses for a minute, then gestures to send something from his deck to Remi’s. “Here’s my info so you can contact me anytime. I do hope you will.”

  “But what about you two?” Remi asks. “They know where you live now. They know you helped us.”

  The professor looks to John and takes his hand.

  “Oh, they’ve always known where we lived, I think. They just didn’t care so long as we kept quiet. We weren’t worth the bother. It’s okay, though,” he says, meeting John’s gaze with a grin. “We’ve always had backup plans in case of something like this. We’ll destroy this house and lay low for a while.”

  “Destroy it?” Ania says, stricken. “But it’s your home! And it’s so . . .”

  I have no idea how she planned to finish that sentence, but this place could not be more different from her parents’ catalog-worthy, polished style. It’s more my kind of place: bits of tech strewn over every available surface, mismatched dishes, pillows on the couches that could have come from four different sets, digital frames with photos of friends on every wall. Cobbled together, lived in. Beautiful. John gives a sad smile.

  “I know. But it’s all just stuff. Home is right here,” he says, tightening his arm around the professor’s waist and pressing a kiss to his temple. “And we still have duplicates of all the best stuff from up here underground, copies of all the photos and such. It won’t be permanent. We’ve always had a more long-term getaway plan, just in case. Call it a second retirement. It’ll actually be quite nice, I think.”

  Professor Silva smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yes. Our next adventure. Leaving my lab behind will be hard, but we’ll be fine. Don’t worry yourselves about it.”

  And with that, we head back outside for one last look at the house. The professor turns and summons maz between his hands, spinning together a spell with incredible speed and dexterity. It glows red in his hands, larger and larger, the weave gaining complexity until it’s nearly the size of his head. Then, with a final nod from John for confirmation, he hurls the maz at their house.

  The outer walls glow for a brief moment with that red light, so similar to the glow from the structural spells used in Kyrkarta—but with the opposite effect. The roof cracks, then collapses inward, followed by the left wall, then the right. We can see straight into the kitchen as the cabinets crumble, their contents (including several boxes of pasta) spilling to the ground. As an interior wall covered in family photos disintegrates, the professor turns to Ania, who bites her lip to fight back tears.

  “It’s necessary,” he says. “This way, when the soldiers wake, it’ll look to them and any investigators who follow like we have nothing to come back to. It’ll look like we’re gone for good. We’ll go underground, let the wards up here decay, and pack our things. When we’re ready . . . well, there’s a lot of world out there. We’ll be fine.”

  Ania dashes her tears away and nods. Jaesin throws an arm around her shoulders and hugs her to his side. I stare down at the ground as the remnants of their eight years in this house crumble like so much dust. The same thing almost happened to our apartment a dozen times, thanks to Kyrkarta’s earthquakes. MMC’s earthquakes. If our building had crumbled like this, with all of Remi’s bright sneakers and Jaesin’s don’t-touch-my-spatula spatula and my cobbled-together tech equipment . . . I don’t know what I would have done.

  A notification pops up in the corner of my vision. A message from Davon.

  Davon: Hey, are you still in Jattapore?

  Some major stuff is going down at MMC here. Things are about to get so much worse.

  I hope you’re looking out for yourself.

  I bite my lip and look to the professor and John, then to Remi and the others. We’re definitely looking out for each other.

  You: We’re still here. We’re coming home on the next train, though

  Can I call you once we’re on the train?

  So you can tell us what’s going on

  Davon: Yeah, fine. But hurry. You’ll need to be prepared when you get back.

  Well, that sounds delightful. I feel slightly better about involving him in all this, though. Apparently he’s already involved himself.

  You: Okay. Call you asap.

  Davon: Love you, Dizzy.

  When I tune back in to reality, Jaesin is watching me closely while Remi says their final goodbyes to the professor. I force a small smile.

  “Ready to go?” I ask him.

  He gives it a moment of serious consideration, then nods. “Yeah, I am. Let’s go home.”

  Twenty-Two

  THE TRAIN RIDE BACK TO Kyrkarta is even longer than the last one, but the time passes much faster in the fancy sleeper cabin Ania splurged on so Remi could get some rest. Though . . . that may be because I’m not exiled within the first ten minutes. Instead, I spend the entire time processing how deeply and utterly screwed we all are.

  We need a plan. Step one: call Davon, find out what new stuff is going on at MMC, and maybe beg for help. An uncomfortable prickling sensation crawls under my skin at the thought, but I shove it away. Now’s not the time to get precious about accepting help from people. Not when our lives are on the line.

  As soon as the train pulls away from the station, I make the call.

  With a few quick commands to my deck, the window pops up in my lenses and dials Davon’s comm code (number one on my favorites list). The call connects after barely half a ring.

  “Are you okay?” Davon says by way of greeting. My entire body relaxes a fraction at the sight of him.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Do you mind if I share the call with the others?”

  He shrugs. “Saves you having to repeat everything, I guess. Sure.”

  I add the others to the call with a heavy sense of impending doom, like I’m about to receive a death sentence. Hell, maybe I am.

  “Can
everyone hear me?” Davon asks, expression grim.

  Four affirmatives.

  “Just spit it out, the suspense is killing me,” I say.

  He nods. “Yeah. It’s just . . . MMC is planning something big. They’re evacuating all personnel from station twenty-nine, and they had the police block off the whole district due to ‘structural issues’ from the explosion. But I’ve done some digging, and I’m not finding any reports on these structural issues from our civil engineers and building inspectors. R&D, though . . .”

  He pauses and runs a hand through his hair. “A few of the R&D labs have just been assigned extra staffing, and their predicted total maz inventory counts take a huge jump two days from now. But the individual unit counts for each strain don’t add up right. There’s a huge difference. So they’re expecting a big influx of . . . something? Right as one of the primary catch stations gets closed down? I don’t know, I keep running up against classified files even I can’t decrypt.”

  I nod, the pieces slowly clicking together. “They’re doing something at the junction station to get a lot more maz-15. I have no idea what, but if they’re blocking off a whole neighborhood . . .”

  Ania claps a hand over her mouth with a squeak. “They’re going to widen the rift even more,” she says.

  “Of course,” Remi says, matter-of-fact, the most unsurprised. It’s a good thing they aren’t insufferably smug by nature, because they’ve earned massive gloating rights. They were so right about MMC all along.

  Jaesin chews on his thumbnail, eyes darting all over the compartment as he thinks. “The professor said they’ve been slowly drilling deeper and wider from the start, so the planet would release more maz-15. Do you think they’re planning a big push? Something that might threaten the neighborhood?”

  “Wait, back up,” Davon says, shaking his head. “Maz fifteen? What’s this about drilling?”

  “You don’t know?” Remi asks.

  Davon’s face is utterly blank. “I don’t know . . . what?”

  The others look at me, which I guess means it’s my responsibility to fill Davon in on all we’ve learned. I keep my breathing slow and even and do my best to detach myself from the words, their meaning, their history, even as my stomach threatens to rebel once again. When I finish, even over the video, I can tell how pale Davon has gone.

  “That has to be it, then,” he says. “They’re going to widen this rift thing they caused, capture all that new maz, and let the neighborhood collapse so they can be free to do even more in the future.”

  Jaesin snorts. “Awesome. Great timing, really.”

  “No, seriously though,” Davon says. “It is great timing—for them. They’re going to blame it all on you.”

  “Wait, what?” Remi says, surfacing somewhat from their exhausted daze. “How is it our fault?”

  “Don’t you see?” Davon says. “They’re already laying the groundwork for it by saying the neighborhood is unstable because of the explosion at twenty-nine. The one they’re saying you caused, even though they set you up.”

  “Fuck,” Jaesin says, and I grunt in agreement. When MMC goes for you, they go hard.

  It kind of is our fault, though, isn’t it? If I had never taken that last job, we would never have caused that explosion. If we hadn’t been thieves in the first place, the neighborhood would still be fine. It is our fault.

  But if we hadn’t gotten ourselves into this, MMC would still be flying under the radar. They’d just be making this worse a little more slowly, instead of capitalizing on this opportunity to blame someone else for their douchery.

  They won’t get away with it for much longer.

  “Okay, nothing’s really changed,” Ania says, leaning forward to prop her elbows on her knees. “Priority number one is still to stop this drilling operation and seal up that rift.”

  Remi settles back against the seat, exhausted. “But even that won’t solve the problem of MMC coming after us. We have to try to get the word out somehow.”

  “Won’t work,” Jaesin says. “Media, mayor, police, remember? All MMC controlled.”

  “Then we blackmail them or something!” Remi says, desperate. “You’ve got dirt on everyone from your insomnia hacking, Diz, surely you can figure something out.”

  “I’m sorry, you what?” Davon interrupts, but I wave him off.

  “Never mind, you didn’t hear that. You’re right, I might be able to put something together. I’ll use the rest of this train ride to figure out what I’ve got and what else I might need.”

  I turn to stare out the train window for a long moment, the beautiful and untouchably deadly terrain rushing by outside. My mental catalog of blackmail material is extensive, from the former chief of police who said his daughter’s dog ran away but really he sold it because he hated it, to some truly sick and disturbing stuff I wish I could unknow about the president of MMC’s executive board. Unfortunately, the latter is the kind of thing I’ll need here, and there’s plenty more where that came from.

  I shudder and look up at the others, a hollow pit in my stomach. “There really isn’t a clean, safe option here. I don’t think blackmail alone will be enough. It’s not a guarantee. And if we’re gonna keep the entire industrial sector from collapsing, we have to get there before they start widening the rift. We can’t let an entire district of our city be destroyed again, not when we can prevent it. Right?”

  Jaesin nods. “Kyrkarta is our home.”

  “We have to do all of it,” Remi agrees. “Take out the drill. Seal the rift. Blackmail the assholes. And hopefully get back out afterward, of course.”

  “Yeah, let’s not neglect that bit,” Ania says. “I like that bit.”

  “Same,” I say, trying to hold back a grin. “Kyrkarta is our home,” Jaesin said. A part of me had been truly terrified that the others wouldn’t care enough. That they’d write off the district as a loss, get me to try the blackmail and call it a day if it didn’t work.

  But we’re all in, it seems. Finally united, and not just against me. But there’s one last thread loose.

  “Davon. I know this is a lot, and I completely understand if you can’t be involved,” I say, swallowing my pride and looking his image straight in the eye. “But we could really use your help with this. Will you? Can you help us?”

  Davon drops his head into his hands with a heavy sigh, but when he looks up it’s with a nod and a determined expression.

  “Okay. I’ll do what I can. I’ll get you into the station. You can crash at my place while you get everything ready. Just let me know what you need.”

  I don’t really do hugs, but right now, I totally would crawl through this video call to give him a hug if it were possible. To have him still be there for me even when things are this bad, when it means betraying the employer who’s given him everything, brings me all kinds of warm family feels. It’s just . . . nice to have someone like him in my life, the one person I can always count on to never abandon me.

  “Thanks, Davon,” I say, then clear my throat in embarrassment. Bit watery sounding there. “I really appreciate this.”

  “Anything for you, Dizzy.” He gives me a half smile, then looks over his shoulder and back at the camera. “I’m gonna see if I can lose my roommates for tonight so there’s space for you all. Call me when you get back into town, okay?”

  “Will do,” I say. “Bye, Dav.”

  Silence reigns for a long time in the wake of the call.

  Even after everything else we’ve learned, it’s a lot to take in. We’ve all grown up annoyed at MMC in a vague sort of way for controlling maz and charging for it, but it was always tempered by the good they’d done for our city. For us.

  But they’ve killed scientists. They caused the plague. They profited from it. And they’ve been actively making it worse. Now they’re about to destroy an entire neighborhood—again—because their greed is out of control, and we seem to be the only ones who have the information and the stones to do something about it.
/>   Ania opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again, and repeats the cycle three times before I finally snap, “Spit it out, Ania!”

  She presses her lips together in a thin line, then nods. “Okay, I just . . . I’m not backing out. I’m still all in. I’m just worried. MMC is huge. We’re just us. I know we have to try, I’m just afraid we’ll fail, and then where will the world be?”

  I study Ania, her concerned frown, the tightness around her eyes. She needs reassurance, but Jaesin is quiet, gaze fixed on Ania’s hands where they wring together in her lap. Remi is quiet too, just watching and listening, still in energy conservation mode. I’m not exactly the sunny cheerleader of this group, but someone needs to say something before this doubt grows infectious and brings our resolve crumbling down. We have to do this. We have to rally. And I have to be the one to get us there.

  “I get it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same, at least a little bit,” I say, willing Ania to meet my eyes. “But look at it like this: it’s the same thing we’ve been doing for years, but bigger. We crack some MMC security, do a little sneaking, Remi waves some maz around—all stuff we know. We’ve essentially been training for this for the past two years.”

  “But with intentional explosions this time,” Remi adds, mustering the energy for a quirked eyebrow.

  Jaesin laughs. “I mean, that’s a bonus, for me. I’ve always wanted to blow something up on purpose.”

  He reaches out to run a single finger over Ania’s wrist, slow and soothing, and she twists her hand to clasp his. I raise an eyebrow and bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling, but Ania does no such thing. She looks up at Jaesin, lit up from the inside by his touch.

  “Well,” she says with a watery laugh, “I’d hate to deprive you of a chance to achieve your dream. Let’s blow up a drill.”

  We spend the next hour of the train ride in deep discussion, talking out our plans for breaking in, sealing the rift, dealing with the drill, and somehow not getting immediately caught and killed. Not gonna lie, it’s all worryingly vague, but we have time to refine them. Maybe Davon will have some insight. I’ll be able to ask him soon.