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.