Page 73 of Coldwire
“You mean the chip that lets me go upcountry?” he asks. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I didn’t think that was a matter too unexpected to ask about. He’s an anarchist, after all. One who won’t shut up about Indisposition, insistent that any users who disappear from the servers but do not wake up musthave had their minds deleted by NileCorp. The more logical possibility is that every once in a while, an error occurs in the Pods or the Claws, and people’s brains go on the fritz. NileCorp pays an enormous settlement, the families mourn, and the rest of us continue with our lives in virtual.
“Given how many strong-worded leaflets of yours I’ve had to sift through fingerprinting,” I say wryly, “I assumed you hated upcountry enough to want out.”
Nik scoffs. “Yes. I have my chip. Thank you for worrying about whether I will be able to partake in the plan. Anyway…” He clears his throat. He evidently welcomes no further questions about the state of his subscription to StrangeLoom. “You think that will get us in? Entering on the maintenance ports?”
“It’s the only method I can imagine that doesn’t require those second passwords,” I say. “We’re not going to know until we try it. But even this gets you closer than anything you’ve brainstormed, right?”
He doesn’t respond, which means I’m correct. The temptation to relish competes with my disconcertment, growing with each passing second that I watch Nik for his reaction. In the other seat, Blare makes a loud snoring noise, harmonizing with the electric charging. They haven’t stirred despite the light.
“It’s not going to be easy,” I warn. “Offron is Medaluo’s most guarded data center.”
“We’ll get in,” Nik says. He leaves no room for argument. It’s not only a statement thrown at me. It sounds like a promise he’s making himself.
“May I ask once again,” I try, “what the program is?”
“Would it make a difference if you knew?” Nik returns.
It would. Because the longer they keep it from me, the more I’m convinced this has something to do with me. With what I uncovered the last time I was in Medaluo.
I lean forward on my elbows. “You have a lot to lose if I decide to go haywire and take the risk of returning to Atahua.”
Nik shifts too. We’re facing each other directly, our feet braced for the moment the bell goes off in the grappling ring.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Luckily for you,” I counter, “I don’t want to. I want your information. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
“I think you overestimate your negotiating power here.”
“I think you don’t understand how much I’ve already parsed.” The vehicle shudders when Miz pulls out the charging cord. Her silhouette moves along the dark windows. My attention stays firmly on Nik. “The moment I saw you outside a video screen, I wondered if we had already met.”
There’s a reason I asked if he still had his chip, not whether he’d ever possessed one at all. If there was a time when I met him already, it has to have been upcountry last year. I scan him, and every detail is cohesive to what I innately expected. The faint scar on the left side of his dark brows. The paler strip of skin on his right wrist where he must have once worn a watch and since removed it. The flash in Nik’s gray eyes—terrified, for a brief second.
“I thought it was because I spent all that time studying you,” I say. “My team in Button City split duties on the footage we had. We were only designated three each to take notes on and then pool together, but I found myself going to their boxes too just to learn a bit more information, gain a bit more insight.”
What I don’t say out loud is that I watched all his videos again, then again. Something kept bothering me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I memorized how he moved, how he ran. I read through our brief front to back and spoke his name under my breath before I went to sleep, just to have captured a part of him first. The mixed-reality practice runs weren’t depicting him correctly. When I almost got him on that second encounter, our eyes locked just as my hands faltered on the cuffs I was preparing. If he hadn’t bested me the third time, knocked me out and escaped while I wasunconscious, I might have started wondering if I was letting him slip away on purpose.
“I don’t know how,” I say, “but I think you were there with me in Kunlun. I think you know me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nik counters. He’s playing aloof, vacant. But I see him tapping his thumb to his index finger, then his middle finger. When he hits his pinkie finger, he reverses, repeats the process in a profane variation on counting prayer beads.
“Is it?” Ten weeks is a long time. “Let me prove it to you.”
I hurtle forward.
This time I’m not trying to win. I have no intention to disarm. I’m not even trying to hurt him. My arm collides with Nik’s chest; I push him onto the console, lock him down with the press of my knees. I take a swing, aiming right for his nose, and he blocks my hit by shoving upward on my elbow, breaking my trajectory before it can land. In the next breath I’m already shifting, attempting to stand again so that I can drive my elbow into his stomach, but Nik hisses, kicking me back.
He keeps his strike measured. I fly into the seats, my hair obscuring my eyes. Blare has woken with the commotion—they barely have the time to yell “Hey!” before I skid along the floor in the small space, reaching for Nik’s ankle.
I wrench at him, pulling him down. He has no time, no room in the van to maneuver elsewhere. And when his head thuds to the floor, when I raise my fist once again for a strike dead center on his face, he shoves his fingers into the side of my ribs, crumpling my form before I can make contact.
I prepare no next move when Nik goes on the offense. He takes the chance to incapacitate me, reverses how I’ve loomed over him so that his hands are clamped to my shoulders, his knee pinning my stomach in place.
And I say, “Point proven.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Nik snaps. He can’t feign these instincts. Knowing how I move. Knowing exactly how I fight.
