Page 74 of Coldwire
“You’re bleeding!” Blare wails.
Nik doesn’t let go of me. I don’t break his gaze.
“The program,” I say. I give him this out. We won’t speak of why. I won’t push him further on what he will not answer. But he has to give me something. Anything. “What is the program?”
Blare scrambles up, grabbing Nik’s arm to haul him off me. He is unwilling, in that initial response. He lets go one hand at a time, afraid I’ll charge again. Sensation returns to my left shoulder, then my right. When Nik straightens, he stays sitting on the floor of the van, close, wary. In tentative armistice, I mimic him, rising slowly so that I remain on the floor with my legs crossed.
Silence settles in the space between us, heavy as velvet, draped and pooled.
“The program,” Nik finally says, “is a corruption exploit for the StrangeLoom engine.”
Blare passes him a tissue, and Nik wipes the scratch on his temple where blood has beaded to the surface. That wasn’t me. It’s his own fault for colliding with the van.
“What does that mean?” I ask. “You’d be able to hack it?”
“Yes. To the very core level.” He exhales, setting down the bloodied tissue. “I don’t hate upcountry. I hate NileCorp’s control over the invention. We could unlock NileCorp’s settings on every nation’s server. Delete the subscription model on users. Make upcountry a public right and freely accessible to anyone with a plug-in.”
My eyebrows shoot up of their own accord. I understood his team were anarchists. I didn’t think that meant they had such inexact ideas for the be-all and end-all of freedom.
“If you corrupt StrangeLoom,” I say slowly, “what’s stopping NileCorp from refusing to run their servers? They won’t be making money anymore.”
“Good,” Nik replies sharply. “The next thing I want is NileCorp dead in the ground. Theyshouldn’thave control over those servers. Thereshouldn’t be one company storing every bit of information about every person who has ever gone upcountry.”
“The servers would collapse without their maintenance.”
“Maybe countries need to be taking over their own maintenance if they want a place to live. It’ll force them to have their own system instead of relaying everything back to NileCorp.”
I wait a beat, making sure I’ve heard him right. “You wantMedaluo’sgovernment taking over any part of upcountry?”
Nik grimaces. “I didn’t claim it was a perfect plan,” he says.
“Medaluo has Kunlun, and they’re doing fine,” Blare offers.
“Medaluo doesnothave Kunlun,” I say. “Kunlunhas Kunlun, because Kunlun has more billionaires than square footage. Of course Medaluo’s not going to shut them off from the world just because they can.”
Even with a corruption exploit, I have trouble believing StrangeLoom couldn’t just kick Nik right out. NileCorp has millions and millions of dollars of reward money set aside every year for hackers, prompting them to submit the smallest of loopholes rather than exploit them. Even the toughest underground black hats will help NileCorp for the payout.
No wonder the only entity that would even make a program like this is a national government. If monetary gain isn’t the motivation, the only remaining reason is power.
“Don’t you think,” I say, “if the Medan government made something like this, it would benefit them most if you used it?”
“You see what the papers say about me already,” Nik replies. “If I have to declare myself a traitor loyal to Medaluo to see NileCorp burn, so be it.”
The passenger door flings open, bringing Miz’s return.
“We’re charged,” she announces. She clambers back into her seat. Turns around. “Why are you both on the floor?”
Nik gets up, dusting himself off. He’s clearly finished with our conversation, and I let him extract himself. He returns to the back. I ease myself onto a seat.
“Off to Threto we go,” Blare says quietly, doing their best to ease the tension. I nod to acknowledge their effort.
Still, when I fold my arms, I lean away, toward the window. The night shows no movement outside. Only empty houses and skeletal trees, faintly visible by city light in the distance.
If they knew me from my posting—Nik and Miz and Blare—why set me up for murder and treason? Why not ask me to come along, say that we were once acquainted, that my presence is needed?
Slowly, my gaze slides back to Blare. Their fingers fly over a handheld, the screen tilted so that I can’t see what they’re typing. At the front, Miz has put on her glasses. She’s typing too. They’re speaking to each other, right in front of me. When I helped Miz put on her eyeliner, she barely dared to move. That’s not the behavior of someone who enjoyed my friendship in the past. That’s the precautionary agitation of being around a complete stranger.
I breathe onto the window, misting the surface. None of this makes sense.
