“Give me one second,” I shout over the noise, louder now that we’re so close to the source, and get to work on the platform’s console. Easy. Some basic security here, a supervisor’s password required to give the shutdown command, but I retrieve it from the database and enter it without a problem. Another quick command and—
The vibration of the platform beneath our feet suddenly tapers off with a great sound of powering down, the lights around us flickering for a moment. I grin.
“Extractors are off! Working on the drill now,” I call to the others. I can’t do much without the executive board’s drill codes, but I can at least get the lay of the digital land, see what I’ll be working with.
“We’re partly here to break stuff, right?” Jaesin says, his voice full of twelve-year-old-Jaesin intent. I look up, scenting mischief on the air.
“Right,” Remi shouts back with a grin.
Jaesin hefts a heavy piece of steel piping. “Cool. I’m gonna break stuff.”
And with that, he swings the pipe into the extraction system master control, sending up a shower of sparks and a deliciously satisfying crunch. Ania’s eyes nearly bug out of her head, watching Jaesin’s arms, then she seems to shake herself and begins weaving her own bit of destruction. She and Remi take turns hurling spells at the rest of the system, setting small fires and crushing pipes. As soon as I look around for something to join in with, though, a notification pops up in my lenses.
The drone at MMC headquarters.
I flip over to the video feed from the drone and watch as the lights in the boardroom click on, triggered by two women in their fifties entering the room. They take seats on the far side of the table, guessing about the topic of the emergency meeting as they wait for their fellows. The board members trickle in one or two at a time over the next two minutes, and I have to laugh to myself. They’re all passive-aggressively trying to be the most fashionably late, like they’re so important they had other priorities even in the middle of the night. Once they’re all seated, an awkward silence falls as everyone waits for someone else to bring up the reason for the meeting. No one does, of course. None of them called the meeting.
I did.
I shout for the others to pause in their destructo party, toggle on a noise filter, and speak loud and clear through the tiny speakers on the drone.
“Hi, everyone!”
The board members freeze. I share the video feed from the drone with the others so they can tune in, and I give Ania mic access too. She’s better at talking to fancy people than I am. Once I’m sure we have everyone’s attention, I command the drone to fly down from its perch on the ceiling and hover at the front of the room in plain view.
“You must be wondering why we’ve called you here tonight,” Ania says in her best business voice.
“Who the hell are you?” a sharp-looking man in a rumpled black suit demands.
I roll my eyes and jump in. “Before we tell you that, I just want you to know what’s at stake here. First off, you might have noticed the maz this drone is carrying. It’s a pretty clever spell if I do say so myself, something we created ourselves just for this occasion. I’ll spare you the details, though, and be clear about just one thing. That purple glow is maz-15. If at any point you try to leave or we don’t like what you’re saying, the drone lets the spell loose, and you all spend the rest of your very short lives vomiting your plaguey guts out. Understood?”
The man closest to the door pushes back from the table, and I swoop the drone toward him, cutting off his exit.
“Ah ah ah,” I say. “Sit down, Michael. There’s a good boy.”
“How do you know my name?” the man asks, trying to sound brave despite his pale face and shaking voice. I gesture for Ania to take over again, and she nods gracefully.
“We know everything about you, Michael,” she jumps in smoothly. “And you, Antonia, and Koki, and Ceillie, and everyone in this room. Mostly important, though, we know what you don’t want anyone to know. We know about the mistress, Michael. Those awful, dirty people you’re in debt to, Irif.” Ania goes around the table one by one, listing the fruits of my insomnia hacking, my terrible habit that I thought would never be anything but a diversion for sleepless nights. Turned out to be more useful than I ever thought. MMC may be untouchable, with their media control and purchased politicians. Their board members, on the other hand, are not. By the time Ania’s done, the whole room is silent, everyone’s eyes averted, cheeks stained red where complexions allow, everyone sweating or breathing fast or tense with fury.
“What is it you want, then?” a stately older woman with white corkscrew curls asks.
I glance away from the video feed in time to see Ania’s lips curl into a triumphant little smile. “The drill codes, please,” she says, “and your word, worthless though it is, that you’ll stop every awful thing you’ve been doing to this community. No more doing business with maz-15. No plans to destroy parts of the city. No murdering scientists. But mostly the drill codes.”
I pick up the speech from there. “Give us the codes and we’ll keep our mouths shut, and this little drone will keep its maz to itself. You all get to walk out of here plague-free. Your choice. What do you say?”
Then a bullet pings off the station beside me, and I snatch my hand back, blood thundering in my ears.
Another platform drifts toward us, crawling with guards in bright orange suits like ours. I grab my deck off the console and bring it down into my lap, digging into the maintenance pod systems. Sure enough, there are two new pods down here with us, and three more on the way. We’re about to have a lot more company.
“Shit,” I say eloquently.
“Yes,” Ania agrees, even as she weaves us a shield, thick rivulets of terraz pouring between her fingers.
“Okay. This is fine,” I say, thinking, thinking. “We can’t let that other platform reach us. Jaesin, you have a driving license. You theoretically can steer things. Think you can fly this platform?”
He blinks at me. “I mean, I think I’m gonna have to. It can’t be that different from a car, right?”
I don’t bother answering that. In my ear, the board members bicker among themselves, working their way slowly toward the inevitable. Just give us the codes, I think furiously at them, just do it!
“Okay, Jaesin, get us away from that other platform and take us down near the rift so Remi can do their thing. Ania, I’m gonna work from inside the system to stop those other pods on their way down. I think. Can you keep our shooty friends off our backs for a little while?”
“A very little while,” she says, adding magnaz to her weave with elegant gestures. “I’m not Remi, I can’t just pull in all of this maz around us. Unless Remi has the time to load some of it into my ware, I’ve got limited utility here.”
Damn it to hell, she’s right, and it’s obnoxious. How frustrating to be surrounded by vast stores of power you can’t use. But it’ll have to be enough. I tip my head back and will my breath to slow, my heart to calm, my brain to just chill the hell out for a minute. Slow down and think.
First things first.
“Ania, at your feet,” I say, then slide her my gun. I can’t do much with it while I’m working the computer side of things, and this way she’ll at least be able to do something when her maz runs out. In my ear, the board members are having some kind of vote, but I catch only the last two votes. Both “no” votes.