Page 36 of Breaking Point
“I’m not a member of the coding institute anymore.”
“What?I don’t understand.How can they fire you?You haven’t done anything wrong!”
“The evidence says I did.”He shook his head.“They showed me the code.It has all my signatures.It looks exactly like something I would write.It came from my office—just not my desk.They pointed out that I wouldn’t be stupid enough to hack the tankball from my own desk, and they’re right.”He spoke with such…remoteness.As if he wasn’t talking about himself.
“Then there’s the code itself.Designed to make the ball fall into the hands of a Void Hound topman at just the right moment.It’s something I could have written in my sleep.”
Luciana stared at him, too terrified to speak.
“Then there are my money sheets.Bets placed and won, going back two seasons.And a bet placed that didn’t pay out because the arena collapsed.If the game had been won by the Hounds, the payout was astronomical.The odds were against them.”
“Youhatetankball,” she whispered.
“Tankball was just the medium.There were other bets…it set a trend.They were all high risk, and all undiscovered.”His smile was humorless.“They say I would have gone on, undiscovered, if I had known just a little bit more physics and learned a little more about tankball.I wouldn’t have put so much force on the ball.Once it crashed through the wall, it executed the rest of the commands that would have sent it careening around the tank and then drop into the Hound’s goal mouth.Once it broke out into the platform structure, those same moves destroyed all the support girders, instead.”
Luciana licked her lips.“It’s all…lies.”
Devar didn’t react.“Look at my finances.It’s all there for anyone to see.”
“Manufactured,” she shot back.She was shaking.Badly.
Devar shrugged.
She curled her hand into a fist.“Butyou didn’t do this!”
“I can’t prove that,” Devar said, his tone flat.“And they can prove I did.”
Luciana beat her fist upon the table, in soft movements matching her heart rate.She drew in a breath, while Devar watched her pull herself together.“There has to besomethingwe can do, surely?”She was proud of the fact that her voice was calm, matching his.
“There is something you can do,” Devar said.
“Tell me,” she said quickly, her hope soaring.
“Distance yourself from me.Don’t visit again.Don’t send me messages.Tell everyone you know how disappointed you are in me, that you don’t know where you went wrong, raising me.Declare I’m no son of yours.”
A fresh burst of horror spilled through her.“No!”
“And Caelen must do the same thing,” Devar went on with an implacable tone.“It is the only way either of you will come through this with minimal damage.”
“You speak as if you’ve given up, Devar.You can’t give up!I’ll find a way out of this, Iswear.”
“You think I haven’t spent all my time in here trying to figure out a way out?There is none, mother.”
He put his hand on the table, and she could see how thin his fingers had grown.Then he said the most horrifying thing she had ever heard.“They’re attaching the death penalty to the fraud charges.”
The roaring in her head muffled all thought.All feelings.
When she could next pay attention to anything, she realized that she was being propped up in the chair.Devar held her shoulders.“Are you back?”he asked.
“I wish I wasn’t,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
He raised his chin and spoke to the ceiling.“Some water for my mother, please.”He settled her on the chair properly and returned to the other side of the table.
A guard stepped into the room and put a disposable cup on the table in front of Luciana and left.
Luciana didn’t think she could drink without gagging.She said weakly, “They’re just fraud charges…”
Devar seemed cold as he said in his precise way, “Fraud is a broad legal category covering any deliberate falsification of ship systems data.It’s the result of that falsification that determines the sentence.In this case, the altered code for the ball also altered environmental controls—” He grimaced.“Gravity.”Then he went on.“And that led to multiple deaths.They still call it fraud, because it was tampering for gain, only the penalty is upgraded.The charge is now fraud with lethal consequences.”
