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, hauntingly 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.