Marked (15 page)

MIYU COMES THROUGH IN LESS THAN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS,
thanks to her hacker contacts. That girlfriend who interns at AltaGen? Turns out, she really does take on some interesting “freelance work.”

Almost no one else knows that her real name is Moira, Miyu warns, and I have to swear never to use it. Only her digital alias,
Thumb.
Thumb, as in the rogue leader of the Fist, a rusting powerful limb of the Castran underworld. They've never worked directly with us before, but more than once, they've passed along news. Clips like the one from Benroyal's last press conference, my favorite, in which one splattered fuel pod—tossed against the security glass in the Assembly House—started a glorious riot.

But all this time, I never knew who these hackers
actually were. No one did. We knew they were friendlies, and we knew some of their screen names. That's it. And in a million years, I'd have never dreamed they'd have connections to someone like Miyu.

To list the Fist's exploits is to rattle off every flex hacker's Galaxy's All-Time Greatest Hits. Most folks know this crew best for their harmless pranks. How about the day every single corporate ad was replaced by slo-mo clips of the prime minister picking his nose? How it took the Sixers eighteen hours to stop it and nail down the glitch?

Hands down, best Tuesday ever.

But the Fist isn't just empty snark attack. No, they've landed a few bigger jabs too. Last year, when a billion in Castran tax revenue—earmarked for Domestic Patrol stun sticks and riot gear—just up and magically disappeared? Yeah, you can bet the Fist took credit for that. They always tag their work, yet none of them's ever been bagged or doxed.

So as I stand next to Miyu in the war room and look at this face on the feed screen, I'm a little stunned. I lean in, all the better to gawk. Moira—interstellar hacktivist—isn't what you'd expect at all. No bright pink locks or holo-tats undulating up and down her bare arms. Instead, she's got long dark hair, neatly braided. Dark skin, delicately stained lips. White, high-end shirt, sleeveless and understated,
blank as an old-fashioned canvas. She's a little older than I am—just a girl sitting tall in a beige-y, sunlit room. And that's when it hits me. Moira could be anyone, anywhere. A young intelligence agent or even a Sixer.

Or a rusting genius.

“Thanks for doing this,” Miyu tells her.

I nod. In truth, I'm a little bit awed.

“Sure, why not?” she replies, as if scheming with rebels is all in a day's work. “We started out tapping the hull,” Moira explains. When I blink dumbly, she adds, “You know, looking for anything and everything about Benroyal's system. Access points. Any of the nasty little wormholes his security techs might have tried to bury for themselves. And there were plenty of those back entrances for them to get back in, but every time we'd find one and fish out a little encrypted morsel, we'd get bounced out. Or worse, King Charlie's bot-ware would try to follow and ghost in through our own back doors.”

“But you got in,” I say.

“Yeah, and I think we've got a couple of good leads for you. Funny,” she says, and I see Miyu's not the only one with a killer smirk. “It's always the money. Even the most oblique operations have to keep up their balance sheets. We found all the good stuff buried deep in his financials.”

I'm not really sure what she means by “oblique,” but if
she's using it to describe Benroyal Corp, I'm assuming it means soul-suckingly dishonest. “Where is Cash?”

“I think we've found him. This intel's pretty fresh. Take a look,” she says, touching her screen.

Instantly, a data-deck splays out over our table. Miyu and I reach down to swipe the cards apart. Among the text files are several headshots. I don't recognize most of them, but then . . . the last two images. Blankly, Cash stares ahead, avoiding the camera like a criminal hauled in for a mug shot. It's tough to pull my eyes away, but I scan the picture next to his. An old man, the deep laugh lines on his brown-skinned face no longer aglow. Toby Abasi, ashen and dull. Still alive, but barely.

As a chamberman, he'd publicly opposed corporate abuses. He was the last honest politician in Capitoline. Back when I was racing for Benroyal, after I'd discovered his black sap empire, Abasi tried to help me expose him. And naturally, the old man paid for it. He was arrested right before my big win at Sand Ridge. The Sixers tried him for treason, then reported him exiled, although most of us figured he'd been secretly executed.

But he's alive. Add one more to the list of people to rescue.

Finally, my eyes drift to the text files, but at first glance, they don't look like much. Numbers. Credit symbols.
Expense reports? I swipe them aside and turn back to Moira. “Where'd you find the pictures?” I ask. “And what's in the docs?”

“We pulled them from a black box, a triple-encrypted, self-destructive directory. It's a ledger from one of Benroyal's IP accounts. And there are some legitimately weird expenses logged in the past year.”

“What'd he invest in?” Miyu asks.

Moira cocks her head, and I read the delight in her face. “A high-rise in Mid-iron. Checked that out, no secret torture cells hidden there. A chain of restaurants in Belaram—which are probably just fronts for his sap dealers—but then something a lot more interesting.”

Miyu and I both lean in, then Moira drops the bomb.

“A space station,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Benroyal acquired it right before you signed your circuit contract,” Moira says. “May be a coincidence. I mean, who knows how many far-flung storage facilities he's bought over the years. We know he uses lots of places like this to handle all kinds of old stuff. He uses them like off-planet way stations. Smugglers find what he wants, and they hand it off to Benroyal's men, who ship it back to him. The man's completely obsessed with antiques.”

“I know,” I say. “He keeps a ton of it in the Spire.”

“Yeah, but get this: Not long after buying this station, he outlays a huge expense for renovating it—a ridiculous amount of armed personnel, updated security systems, even a few dozen pairs of detention-grade sync boots. And . . . it gets even better.” Moira's bubbling over now. It's a little like listening to elegant gunfire. “We snagged a file with station-bound manifests. First, all this new hardware gets space-freighted there, along with a suspiciously long list of IP personnel. Then two days after your big escape? A smaller vac arrives, with even more security, and last but not least, several unnamed passengers. Finally, we stumble onto those images, in a separate file, but tagged with the exact same code name.”

“Code name?” I say.

She nods. “The original name of the space station: U.S.S.
Sweetwater.
”

I fight the sick churn that flares in the pit of my stomach. But Moira's still not finished. “So I keep digging and come up with all kinds of data on the station. Used to be a scientific research complex. They studied combustion, alternative energy sources, desalination techniques, you name it. It's big. It's remote. It's old-world. This clunker's been off the books for so long, it's perfect.”

I nod. “Perfect for a secret prison.”

“Exactly,” Moira replies. “But there's a catch.”

“What is it?” I ask. “Did they move him?”

Moira shakes her head. “No, I don't think so. I think he's still out there. But trouble is, your prince is millions of light-years away, in a restricted, heavily patrolled, no- fly zone. That space station?” She pauses. “It's orbiting Earth.”

Orbiting Earth.
The words spin in my head, like bright, faraway stars. The idea that Cash is out there, just beyond our reach, ignites me. My brain's already firing off a wild hail of directives.
We need a ship, and a mission team . . . pull things together, and leave tomorrow. No. Benroyal's soldiers control every gateway into the galaxy. We'd need our own space bridge to get there. Can we build one? How long . . .

Miyu touches my shoulder. It's as if she can read my mind. I look up and see the soft plead of reason in her eyes. “Phee, even if we could get there . . . you get that close to Earth, and there's nothing but outlaws and IP. They'd shoot you down the second you jumped into orbit, before you even got anywhere close to that station.”

“No,” I say. I shake my head. “There has to be a way.”

Miyu doesn't let go. “There is none. It'd be a suicide mission.” Her tone is gentle, but unsparing. The truth in it drop-kicks the fight out of me.

I look back at the screen, as if Moira might have a magic answer, something to bring back even a glimmer of hope. But there's nothing.

“At least now you know where he is,” Moira says, pity written all over her face.

I take a moment, to pull myself together. I'm choking up, but I manage to blink away the burn in my lids. “Thank you for finding him. I don't know how I'll ever repay you.”

“You already have.” Moira waves me off. “There was a lot more data in those files than docs from this little project, a rust-load of stuff we can use on our own. You ever heard of the Declaration of the Rights of Man? The Bill of Rights? The Cyrus Cylinder?”

I'm frozen, but Miyu nods.

“They're ancient documents,” Miyu says.

“Benroyal kept some in his gallery,” I say. “I saw something called the Magna Carta, but those others? I'm not sure.”

“Yeah? I'd always thought they were legends,” Moira says. “Bedtime stories for easy marks. But that's the thing. They're not. Benroyal's created his own personal archive, digitized copies of thousands of pre-Castran documents. My sources say they're legit too. And inventory notes? Don't even get me started. King Charlie's up to his eyeballs in priceless artifacts.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You should see the display cases in the Spire. It's like he's got a private museum.”

“Emphasis on the word
private,
” Moira says. “Because half his hoard doesn't align with the history we've been taught, and there is so much we can learn from it. It's going to take a while to sift through all this, but what we've found . . . it's looking a whole lot like long-lost treasure.”

She's awestruck at the find, but I can't feel the same joy. What good is treasure, unless it saves Cash? Still, I try not to sink her high.

“I'm glad,” I tell her. “Hope you can use it.”

I look at Miyu.
Chin up,
her expression reads.

“Someday, I'll buy us all a round,” Moira says, touching the screen. “Next time, come here and we'll toast:
Girls, here's to the freedom of information.
”

Then the call screen's blank, and it doesn't matter that I can't manage a grin. Moira's already signed off.

After sharing the news at HQ, I meet Hal at flight control to work through Mary's program. I don't pass out this time, but I do get sick afterward. After cleaning up, I head back into the tomb. By my cot, Bear is already waiting for me. I don't let him hold me. We don't even touch. But when he pulls a bed closer to mine, I lie down beside him.

We're both curled on our sides, eye to eye. Yet in the dim of the cavern, I can't see his face. I have only his breath with the soft promise of his voice, and a part of me clings to the familiar sound. I am so used to hearing him unseen through my racing headset. If only there were static and roadway between us. If we could just talk over the noise, we'd be okay. From here, I can almost reach the old connection, muted words and crackle and hiss.

But when Bear speaks, his voice isn't soft. “Hank's making me squadron leader,” he says. “It's a good chance to step up. I can lead.” His words spiral out like an invitation.
Accept who I've become, and I'll let you in.

But I hesitate. I open my mouth to tell Bear to be careful . . . to tell him I'm terrified he'll die in the next battle, that I'm scared of losing him, that I'm already losing myself. That I can't call him best friend or brother anymore, because we've started to become something else: two half strangers hurtling toward something so new and foreign and confusing that I don't know whether to run into or away from it.