Page 4 of Last Chance to Save the World

“You mean aside from plotting to break into the most secure building on the planet and fuck some shit up?” Rian asks.

“Aside from that.”

We’ve developed a good plan. It’s the whole reason why I had to kidnap Rian in the first place. Over the past week, while the man’s been oblivious to any physical activities we could have been doing, we’ve gone over every schematic of Fetor Towers, mapped out the exact paths needed to get to the nanobot programming unit, and I’ve been perfecting the code I’m replacing within the bots.

It’s painfully simple. Rian’s the only government employee sympathetic to the cause and who also has high-enough clearance to be right beside Fetor during the launch. I’m going to be his guest. Not technically on the list, but we’ll push through. Rian will be expected to leave me behind, with the less-important people and media, while he ascends to the penthouse of Fetor Towers.

I will, of course, not be doing that.

It’s a fuckingtighttimeline, made more complicated by the fact that I’ve been held up longer on the Moon station than I anticipated. And getting the landing sequence I need was a pain in the ass.

But we’re moving now.

I can hear Rian settling into the jump seat behind me; the metal clicks as he adjusts the harness. “I didn’t even know you were trying to seduce me!”

Heh. He’s still on that.

I toss him my flattest look. “I could not have been more obvious.”

“You absolutely could have been more obvious,” Rian says, fumbling for the harness. “As evidenced by—”

“Your obliviousness?” I offer.

Rian sputters as he straps in.

“Anyway, step one: complete,” I say.

“Step one in...seduction?”

“No. You missed that chance. First step to saving the world,” I remind him.

Our timeline starts tomorrow. Rian and I both agreed that we would need to get into the building only hours before the nanobots designed to clean up Earth’s climate are released. If we try to do it any sooner, it would mean that both (a) it would look suspicious that Rian came so far ahead of schedule and (b) someone could spot the changes we made and revert back to Fetor’s programming—the programming that would mean the bots would critically fail and leave the entirety of the planet at the mercy of one asshole trillionaire.

So, we go in tomorrow.

But before that, I had to get permission to dock my ship in the most secure landing strip on Earth.

And, because I’m fucking amazing, I did just that. Despite the fact that we had to wait for-fucking-ever to get it. I expected some delays, but this has been ridiculous.

“I got the clearance codes to land near Malta,” I tell Rian with exactly the right amount of smugness that little feat deserves.

Malta: the small island nation in the Mediterranean that was once home to the first global government. Revolutions shook some of that up, and so did the shift from true governing influence to the unholy alliance between taxes and tourism boards, but Malta’s still culturally important. And, more to the point, the home of Fetor Tech, where the nanobots are going to be launched.

Although the launch of the climate-cleaner program and all the high-security red tape around it did mean we’ve spent longer on the Moon than I intended.

“Do all these delays mess with the timeline? It’s really cutting things close,” Rian says. I’m pretty sure all the officials invited to the launch of the nanobots are already in the city. They didn’t have to arrange for clearance codes or anything like that.

I don’t like the timing either, but there’s not much I can do about it. “We’ll still have plenty of time,” I think, calculating that for myself as much as for him.

But that’s not true, is it? A running list flashes through my mind—get inside the building, get past security into the room where the bots are, get the code uploaded, get to the other office, do the thing Rian doesn’t know about, and get out without getting caught...by Fetor’s people or Rian’s.

I press a few buttons on my ship’s console, andGlorystarts battening down the hatches. I assume. Where did that term come from? Anyway, my ship’s priming for launch.

“I could have pulled some strings,” Rian reminds me. “Gotten us a private relay or something.”

This is dangerous. This plan. And Rian’s connections would have made it easier, obviously.

“I don’t like strings,” I say, perhaps a little too sharply.

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