Page 8 of The Fall

“Kind of. They won’t give us a late gen DocPod, but they have single-use override chips that can expand the capabilities of ours.” Cinder may have pushed them to partner with the Styx, but he wasn’t entirely useless. “They say they can make more.”

“If they expand capability, why can’t we do that ourselves?” Kerr had grown up under the impression that the Chargers could fix anything.

Chalice arrived late, freshly showered and blonde hair immaculately tousled. She knew what it would make Kerr think. She knew it would stoke Kerr’s jealousy. But Chalice did it too often and Kerr found herself growing more and more apathetic. They were done, whether Chalice agreed to it or not.

“Blackbox AI,” Chalice answered Kerr’s question like she’d been there the whole time. Like Kerr was stupid for asking. “Opening it renders the Pod unusable, you can only program it with single-use chips.”

“EosTech’s way of making things proprietary,” Cinder continued. “And the chips will shorten a Pod’s lifespan. Make it do things it wasn’t designed for.”

Piston leaned back in his chair, brushing off Cinder’s concerns. “We have the parts to repair our Pods. We don’t have the parts to repair the late gen models that the Styx have access to.”

Cinder chewed his lip, but he looked like he wanted to say more.

Piston turned his attention to Chalice and Kerr. Are you two going to be able to work together long enough to do this?” He hadn’t said anything to her, but Kerr could imagine how the conversation had gone with his daughter last night. She hoped she’d done the right thing.

Chalice and Kerr looked at each other. Kerr was ready to move on, at least emotionally. The situation between their mothers and Piston taking her in made her feel obligated, but the love she used to feel had died. Working together might round the corners off of those feelings. “You’re the boss.”

Piston snorted his approval, turning to Cinder. “Set it up.”

Ill Met By Moonlight

Sparx lowered the transport outside of the city tower radius. “Don’t get too comfy. Geosats can see us.”

“Who has access to the system anymore?” Sesi fiddled with her earpiece before checking on the twins. They were both a mixture of nerves and excitement, but so different in the way they showed it. Pinga wore a cocky smirk, while Lusa remained stoic and stone-faced.

Sparx shrugged. “Anyone who used to work the comms array. I don’t know who would want to pay for those encryption keys though. They’re only useful for monitoring weather systems and routine status updates from mineral towns further south.”

“What about hacking?”

“Might as well be air gapped. The large models controlled the security on those.” Sparx shook his head. “Model 2 locked down its Ruskov chamber after we powered down 21. The stories about people who try to break in are urban legends now.”

“Not positive ones, I’m guessing?” Sesi asked.

Sparx gave a look that indicated he didn’t want to discuss what he’d heard in front of the girls. Lusa hated not being in the know, but being here at all was a privilege she wasn’t about to jeopardise.

Nodding curtly, Sesi leaned back to hand Lusa the gift the Chargers had made for her. “Talia added an audio channel to it last night.”

“Why does she get that?” Pinga looked offended.

“Because I hung around and you faffed off,” Lusa stated flatly. “Also, I’m more responsible.” She fitted the device to her left eye.

“That looks stupid. Like a monocle.” Pinga mimicked drinking tea with her little finger raised.

Sparx ignored the girls’ bickering. “She set the frequency to a narrow beam. I’ll have to have a line of sight on you, but it can’t be intercepted.”

“And if things go pear-shaped, you gather the transport and pick us up at the rendezvous point.” Sesi finished Sparx’s lecture. “No need to scare them.” She pointed a warning finger at Lusa. “Don’t turn that on until we get into the city.”

Lusa moved her finger away from the on switch. “Why?”

“We’re meeting in Newmarket.”

“Sounds fancy,” Pinga said. The look on Sparx’s face told a different story.

“Unfinished part of Rhea district,” Sesi explained. And they didn’t give us a precise location, which means there’s likely another tracker on your monocle.”

Lusa decided she didn’t care about the derisive name for her gift. Her thoughts were interrupted by the jostle of the transport landing.

“Out we go. On foot from here.” Activating his Thermabulle, Sparx threw four sets of snowshoes out the transport. Sesi and the girls raised the hoods on their sealskin coats.