Twenty-Eight
“NO!”
The word tears itself from my throat, following Remi down into the void. But it’s too late.
Remi’s body falls and falls, a graceful arrow, until they slip into the Maz Sea with barely a ripple, disappearing completely beneath the swirling glow of the most concentrated maz in the world. Right near the rift that’s leaking toxic maz-15. The rift that I just flooded with more poison.
I can’t breathe, can’t hear anything through static in my ears, the crushing tightness in my chest, and my throat is as raw as if I’ve been screaming for hours. They couldn’t just wait? I was working on it, I was going to fix it, between Jaesin and me we could have—
A bullet pings off the platform beside me, bringing me back to the very dangerous present, and I roll away as three more shots come in: two stunning spells and another bullet. Ania crouchs next to me, her woven shield flaring bright gold with each bullet and spell that strikes it.
Maybe waiting isn’t an option after all.
“Drive, damn it!” Ania shouts to Jaesin over the noise, pushing more maz into her shield. “I can’t hold them off forever!”
I get my feet under me and scramble for better cover, ducking behind a low bulkhead. My hands shake over the screen of my deck, the code blurring before my eyes. I take a minute to get my breath back, swallowing great gulps of air to slow my racing heart.
They’ve done this kind of thing before. When they fell from the rooftop, they caught themself, and that was with only the maz in their necklace. Now they’re surrounded by nearly unlimited power. They’re fine. Probably.
“Diz,” Jaesin says, low and calm. “You need to get these failsafes off, then shut that other platform down. See if you can override it, send them back up the tunnel, something. We need them off our backs so Remi can do whatever it is they’re trying to do.”
Dying is what they’re trying to do, it seems. But as I bring up a command prompt, something starts to change in the sea of maz below us. It begins to shift and bubble, like a great creature is swimming beneath the surface, and the different shades of maz start to separate under the will of some unseen hand.
Remi. Cool relief spreads from my heart. They really are fine. Somewhere down there, they’re doing what they do best: weaving something so intricate and beautiful that it takes my breath away.
The clatter of gunfire intensifies. No time to think about it. Remi will do what they can do. I need to do my part.
I type furiously, forcing my way through layer upon layer of useless subroutines and redundancies, trying my best to get the lay of the digital land on the fly. Manipulating our own platform is easiest, so I focus on removing the limiter from the maneuvering jets first.
“You’re going to get a really sudden kick, Jaesin,” I shout in warning as I override the safeties. “Get ready to compensate in three—”
My finger slips.
The platform lurches forward, snapping my neck back and knocking me on my ass, and toppling Ania down right next to me. She manages to keep her shield between us and the incoming projectiles despite the tumble, though the guards are still firing in the empty space where we just were anyway. Jaesin catches himself by the edge of the console and just barely keeps the platform from careening out of control, looping us down and underneath the nearest enemy platform.
Okay, task one, complete. Not exactly graceful, but I’ll call it a victory. Next up: figure out how to mess with the other pods and platforms. I’m well inside the system now, its architecture nearly as familiar as my favorite buildings in Kyrkarta, but I’m having trouble telling all the platforms apart. They’re labeled in the system, but there’s no way to know what label goes with which platform when they’re named generic things like A-694. I just have to test it. There’s no other way.
I find the command for the emergency lighting on the platforms and send a ping, then lean my head out for a second. On the complete opposite side of the cavern, a platform lights up with orange emergency lights in one brief, bright pulse. O-kay. Seven platforms over from the one I wanted. Assuming the labels are in order, that would make the correct one . . .
I send another pulse and lean out again, nearly getting my head taken off by a stun spell aimed right at me. Another platform lights up, seven down in the complete opposite direction.
“Damn it, Diz, hurry it up!” Jaesin shouts, hauling back on the controls. “This isn’t the Sunnaz Festival, quit playing with the lights!”
“I’m trying, asshole,” I growl, and count seven platform IDs in the right direction. I alter the code this time, then push it out to the other platform with a grin.
The alarm sirens go off at full blast, and the lights strobe on and off in a completely random pattern on the correct platform this time. One of the guys on the platform covers his ears and doubles over, but their techwitch quickly weaves a dampening spell to block the painful sound. Spoilsport. Doesn’t matter anyway. It was just a brief distraction, since I was already there. Now, to find the lift controls.
I take a quick glance away from my deck, just long enough to see the maz below whipping into a frenzy, spinning faster and faster in a hurricane of glowing power, with a clear eye at the center. And in the eye, hovering in midair near the bottom, is Remi, using their entire arms in grand versions of the usual subtle gestures they use to weave spells. Something is taking shape in front of them, glowing fiercely and growing larger by the second.
They’re doing it. It’s working.
I send them every ounce of strength I have. I hope they can last long enough to get the patch in place.
Then, as I watch, a guard on one of the other platforms takes aim at Remi.
Oh, hell no.
I identify the correct ID for the platform’s thrusters and hastily push through a new command . . . one that fires the thrusters at full power for two seconds, causing their shots to crash into the cavern ceiling as they fall back. Not hitting Remi, that’s all I care about.
“Nice!” Jaesin calls back to me, then drops our platform straight down so suddenly I think my stomach gets left behind. I grit my teeth and get ready to send another burst, but half my vision flickers red, and a warning notification popped up. My open blocks of code began to disappear one by one, replaced by a laughing triceratops with a skull and crossbones on its forehead.
“Won’t be nice for long,” I say, typing furiously. “Reinforcements are almost here, and they have a counterhacker.”
“Well, do something about it,” Jaesin shouts back. “Remi needs more time.”
His voice is harsh and desperate, laced with all the frustration of being a helpless mundie in a maz fight. Driving the platform is taking all his focus, leaving no time for anything offensive. I look around the cavern, searching for anything that could possibly . . .
Then I have an idea.
“Oh, this is mean,” I say, throwing some coded shields of my own up against the Great Death Triceratops, wherever they may be working from. I dig back into the controls for the gunners’ platform, with extra care to cover my tracks, and take control of its thrusters again. Different tactic this time, though. I lock them out of their own controls and program in a new route, set it on a trigger command, then quickly repeat the whole series with several of the empty platforms closest to the tunnel back up to the surface.