6.4

  The corridor slopes gently downward, red wool carpet soft underfoot, muffling every step. After a while, the right-hand wall drops into a half-partition, opening up the view beyond. There’s the stage: a circular steel slab, packed in tight by hundreds of northsiders, and, to no surprise of my own, they’re all sunk deep into their velvet thrones, faces lost in shadow, swallowed by the sweeping arc of overhead LEDs. Watching. Always watching.

  Onstage, figures sway: limbs bending, bodies folding, silk gliding over metal. Blue qipaos shimmer as they spin, while glowlit ribbons carve neon parabolas through the air, leaving faint afterimages in my vision. Fingers flick, releasing thin filaments that unravel, curling and stretching before catching onto one another in midair, forming shapes that pulse in time with the music. Patterns in constant motion, never still. Too perfect. Too precise.

  Not human.

  Androids? Yes. They. Are.

  The piano beats on, and the woman sings beautifully—she sings:

  “Metal hands, a lover’s grace... Ghosts behind a frozen face... Ticking hearts in hollow chests... Spin and bow at their behest.”

  And the crowd: they ooh.

  But if I were them, I wouldn’t be so enchanted. Not when a single malfunction, a tiny circuitry error, is all it takes to set them off. Maybe it’s a disgruntled patron slipping past security scanners. Or maybe it’s someone like me, a netrunner from the south, tapping into the wrong system at the wrong time. A short-circuit. A power surge. And then, something stirs. A programme that was never meant to run. A presence that was never meant to wake.

  And after that?

  Death.

  There are a couple of security officers dressed in all-black uniforms, a pair of pistols holstered at their sides—because two guns are surely better than one—leaning over the partition, relaxed, as if they don’t have to worry about things going wrong. The north have a history of following the ‘rules’, after all. Beyond them, a separate corridor stretches on, and as we pass, I hear snatches of their conversation.

  “Big finale’s at midnight,” one says, tapping his comm. “They’ve been running diagnostics all week. Last thing we need is another ‘stage incident.’”

  “Yeah, well, those things are sharp as hell,” the other mutters. “You saw what happened last time. If they don’t sync right—”

  “Not our problem,” the first one scoffs. “That’s for the techs to worry about. It’s their money, their reputation, at the end of the day.”

  They chuckle, unconcerned. I keep walking, but something about the exchange sticks with me: the way he said those things, the edge in his voice, like a man who’s seen something he’d rather forget. It’s... unnerving, and I’m not sure why.

  Just as we step into the hallway, the stagelights twitch. A sharp stutter, a breath of darkness swallowing the circular slab below. A second later, they hum back to life. I guess Dance was right: the tampering’s minor, just a hiccup in the system. No full blackout, no alarms blaring, just enough to make people notice. Enough to make it feel like something’s off. A few groans ripple through the audience, a couple of muttered complaints, but nothing more.

  The hallway leads on and on, bearing different offices to either side, and I even catch glimpse of that man, Kenzo Chowdhury, through the window of a door, spinning idly on a swivel chair, looking up at a large plasma screen displaying a grid of security camera feeds, hand to his temple, perhaps talking. He doesn’t seem suspicious, thank God. If he was, he’d already be out of his chair, demanding to know why a pair of human workers showed up instead of androids. But that’s the thing about these shifts in the workforce: most places don’t even realise certain industries are being phased out until long after the transition is complete. And even when they do, I’m sure it wouldn’t be unusual to see human crews still being sent out. Shortages, malfunctions, logistical screw-ups; there’s always some reason. Because at the end of the day, machines are built by people. And people? People screw up all the time. Even the smart ones.

  Down we go, passing out employees who hadn’t bothered to go outside for a smoke break, stinking up the place with that awful throat-stinging ash, and as we come near the end, I see a pair of blinking strobe lights overhead something wide and metal: an elevator, spotless, clean. We step into it, finding that, although it looks much more expensive than something you’d expect to see in the south, it is awful cramped, with just enough space to fit in maybe six people. Dance presses ‘Maintenance’, a long strip of a button on the selection panel, and the elevator eases downward with a smooth, electric hum.

  We decide it’s best to keep quiet until we reach the bottom, just in case that man in the office can overhear our conversations through the cameras. To him, we’re here to do business, not to chat.

  When the elevator hits the bottom and the doors part, I see, sure enough, the tunnel area, and it’s a lot darker than I thought it would be. The kind of dark that feels thick, like it’s pressing against your skin. But as we step out, the fluorescents buzz to life, flickering in slow, mechanical ripples, chasing the shadows down the corridor. It stretches far into the distance, vanishing into a haze of dim light, with several turns branching off to either side. The air is stale with a bite of old wiring, like something that’s been sealed up for too long. Pipes snake along the walls, rust-choked joints weeping, each droplet landing with a hollow plink... plink... plunk. The sound echoes down the tunnel, stretching thin before fading into an uneasy thrum.

  Overhead the elevator, there’s a camera latched to the corner. I scan it and use ‘Server Locator’ to find out what it’s connected to. Sure enough, it leads back to the office, and I flesh out an entire review of the server, snapshot it with my optics, and upload it into the cloud room. After a moment, as Dance and I follow the path leading to the red-blinking room on his mini-map, a noise comes from the cloud, static at first, then solidifying:

  “I’m in,” says Vander. “Terk a bit of time, but the software had no prerblem finding the server ID.”

  “You can see us now?” I ask.

  “More,” he says. “I can flip through the cameras and control their positions.”

  “You see the substation?” asks Dance, and I follow him around the corner, where the tunnels branch out. At the next crossing, there’s an old cot that looks like it was once used to push someone, or something, along.

  After a moment, Vander says, “I think, but it’s too dark. Once yer inside, I can shut off the camera. Doubt the guy checkin’ it will notice since it’s prerctically all black anyway.”

  “Cool worms,” Dance says, wheeling the cot aside. “Shouldn’t be too far ahead.”

  We keep walking and walking, turning here, turning there, and eventually, after only a couple of minutes, the tunnel widens just enough to make me feel like we’ve stepped into the throat of something bigger. Ahead, a large metal door looms, the paint around its edges bubbled and peeling. A faded yellow sign bolted across the centre reads:

  ? MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY – UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED ?

  On the right side there’s a scanner-lock with a hand-shaped inline. Standard. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I scan the lock, activate ‘Manual Override’, and—

  (Authentication Required)

  Shit. This isn’t good.

  “Dance,” I say.

  He’s still looking at his little digital map. “Yeah?”

  “Firewall.”

  “So, use your auto-cracker and bypass it, mate,” he says nonchalantly, still looking at the minimap, zooming in on it with a swipe of his thumb and forefinger.

  “I don’t have an auto-cracker,” I say. “Everything—it’s all manual. I have to override it myself.”

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  Dance sighs. “And you don’t know how to crack a code?”

  I eye him coldly, not responding for a moment. “What do you think?”

  He glares back at me, then pockets the small device. He walks over to the hand-scanner, purses his lips, and says, “Alright. Snapshot the firewall and upload it into the cloud room.”

  I’m unsure of what his plan is, and frankly a little frustrated, but I don’t argue. I snapshot the puzzle with my neural display and upload the picture into the cloud room as ordered, and he fingers his temple, causing his eyes to glow silver and twist. He lets out a sharp laugh.

  “That’s a babywall, mate,” he says.

  “Just do what you have to do, Dance, seriously. We don’t have time for this shit.”

  Dance hums for a second. “Righty. Select: D9, B9, E8, A4—”

  “Slow down,” I say. “Alright. D9, B9, E8, and A4.” I input the selections. “Then?”

  He speaks slowly: “B2, B8, F5, B7, C3, and... A2.”

  I enter them into the passbox one by one. Once done, each of the selections flash green and a female voice plays out from the scanner-lock:

  “User authorised.”

  The firewall vanishes, and the doors to the electrical substation begin to slide apart, moving with heavy, industrial cogs.

  “How did you...?” I say.

  Dance retrieves the hand-held device from his pocket, points it forward, and it starts beeping. He twists a knob at the corner and the sound turns off. “Trust me,” he says. “That was nothing. Basic level security. Don’t need to study any firewall-cracking patterns to solve that dookie. I’ll show you sometime.”

  Still, someone like him, a man who spends most of his time doing chemistry, knowing how to crack the code just like that? I guess he is knowledgeable with an interest and understanding of technology. Could be that he’s just a jack of all trades, though I find that highly unlikely given his precision in dealing with complex matters that any other ordinary person would no doubt struggle with.

  The doors to the substation finally pull open fully; it’s not that dark inside, thanks to the light from the tunnel, though most of it is in shadow. When we step inside, the lights switch on, just like before, and, as expected, the place is full of... of...

  No, not what I was expecting.

  All around the place there are rows of towering server stacks with very dim, very insignificant blue-highlighted panels. They go up and up, bending like live oaks over country roads, not from the weight of age or nature’s will but from the deliberate incline of their design. Thick power conduits snake along the walls, feeding into junction boxes covered in faded labels, and the place smells like stale coolant and ozone; a scent you'd expect in a space designed for electricians—yet somehow, it still feels eerily off-kilter.

  And then I see something strange, something out of place. Those are pods. A half-dozen of them, lining the far-right wall like upright coffins. Glass-fronted, reinforced, sealed airtight. Some are still coated in a thin film of dust, while others look pristine, polished, like someone came down here recently and gave them a once-over. And inside of each one there’s a body. Not human. Androids, each dressed in the same blue qipaos I’d seen the others wear onstage, and they stand motionless, breathless, but the tubes, those thick, snaking cables coiling into the tops of their pods, throb with electricity. Th-thmp. Th-thmp. Beating, ever-so-softly, like a human heart.

  Are they charging? They must be. That means this isn’t an electrical substation, and it’s not abandoned. It’s a charging station for the machines, the performers, and perhaps a few spares, ready to replace any that malfunction onstage.

  At the very centre of the room, there’s a large pillar-like device, standing like the spine of some long-dead colossus in those old fables where gods built machines too powerful to control. The wires and conduits stretch outwards, and along them I can see, and hear, the flow of electricity.

  Near the very front of the substation, there’s a black-and-yellow catwalk leading from the far-left side to the far-right side, and in the middle where it pushes out, there’s a control panel. I scan it and activate ‘Server Locator,’ revealing its connections to everything nearby: red lines converging at the power box near The Ghost in Satin’s entrance and extending even farther, tracing a path beneath the bridge.

  I check the time. It’s been an hour since we initially damaged that power box. Still on schedule, thank the Lord.

  “Had a feelin’ they might have repurposed this place,” Dance says with startling vehemence.

  “That slip the darknet, I take it?”

  Dance heads up the catwalk, one heavy clank at a time, sliding his hand along the dusty railing. “Could’ve, yeah,” he says, voice lazy but sharp. “Ain’t like they got some bloke sitting around in here all day, keeping tabs. These joints only get a tune-up every couple years, if that.”

  “It’s strange,” I say, following him up and looking at the pods. “I’m guessing these are supposed to be some back-up models in case the performers break down.”

  “Not really,” Dance says. “More likely that they just cycle between them every show. Either that or these could be used for a later performance.”

  “Later performance? That means there’s gonna be people down here to bring them up? To activate them?”

  Dance shrugs, as if that isn’t a huge issue, and places his toolbox on the ground before approaching the panel. It’s old, the kind of clunky, industrial tech that was probably state-of-the-art decades ago but has since been patched, rewired, and jury-rigged so many times that no one really knows what’s original and what’s not. The metal casing is scratched and heat-warped, once-sleek plating dulled to a greasy, matte finish. The buttons along the lower panel are mismatched, some newer, bright plastic replacements standing out against older, metal-rimmed switches, and a few are missing entirely, leaving exposed gaps where wiring sticks out.

  “No skin off our back, mate. We’re maintenance, remember?”

  “Still,” I say.

  Dance presses his spike. “Vander, mate?”

  Static. “Yer?” Vander says.

  He releases the spike. “Fuckin’ yer.” Then he presses it again. “Did you blind the camera yet?”

  “Already did before you went in,” he says. “You gonna be okay with that panel?”

  Dance presses the power button, but it turns out it was already on, so the screen simply wakes up, cycling through outdated system logs and power readouts. “Ehhhhhhhhh,” he says. “Why you ask, big man?”

  “I know a thing or two ’bout those old panels havin’ er worked as an engineer,” Vander says. “Dat one in front of you, is it an er H-Series? Maybe an old Techstrum build?”

  Dance squints at the holo-display, tapping the side of the screen like that’ll knock some sense into it. “Ahhh… nah, mate, it’s a Westron C9, looks like. Real ancient piece of shit, too. Feels like I should be wearin’ a bloody hardhat just to stand near it.”

  Vander whistles low. “C9? Dat thing’s er held together with prayers and duct tape. Tell me it ern’t got one of those manual override switches.”

  Dance glances down. There it is: a rusted old toggle switch, half-covered in grime, labelled “MANUAL OVERRIDE – EMERGENCY USE ONLY.”

  He smirks. “Oh, it’s got one. And it’s beggin’ me to flick it.”

  “Funny,” says Vander. “But what you’ll wanner do is er navigate to the system root first. Thing’s old as hell, so it won’t let you toggle the bridge controls without logging in first.”

  Dance rolls his shoulders. “Right, system root. And where’s that sittin’, big man?”

  “Bottom left corner of the screen. Should be a under a prompt, might be er labelled ‘Admin Functions’ or some other corporate jergon. If it’s greyed out, you gotta er wake up the system first.”

  Dance scrolls through the options, frowning as the interface lags behind his inputs. “Bingo. Got an ‘Access Hub’ option, that the one?”

  “Yer, yer. Select it, then check for a sub-mernu called ‘Bridge Operations.’”

  “A sub-what?”

  “Mernu.”

  “Sub-fuckin’-what, mate? Speak English.”

  “Menu,” I say, putting my toolbox down and approaching his side. It’s a fairly complex screen, with layers upon layers of dropdowns. “Look for something called ‘Bridge Operations’.” We scan it for a second, and then there near the bottom: I see it. “There.” I tap it.

  The screen glitches, then loads slow as hell, lines of outdated system logs crawling upward.

  Dance snorts. “Christ, this thing’s older than my mum’s telly,” he murmurs.

  More static. “Should be able to er find the bridge controls in der,” Vander says.

  Dance flicks through the options, past power distribution settings, floodgate management, old maintenance logs dating back decades, and there it is: Bridge Operations - Last Override: 07/28/2087 11:07.

  I press my spike. “Yeah, we got it.”

  “Alright, now lersen close,” Vander says. “Once you select dat, you should see an option for ‘Manual Elevation Override’. Dat’s the one you want. It might ask for a confirmation code, but if the system’s as busted as I think it is, you can bypass that.”

  Dance taps the option. The screen freezes for a second, then a new prompt appears:

  ? WARNING: THIS ACTION MAY DISRUPT TRANSPORT ROUTES. CONTINUE? [Y/N]

  “Ohhh, buddy,” Dance grins, “it’s askin’ me nicely. Who’da thought?”

  I press my spike. “Fingers?”

  A moment later, she says, “Copy.”

  “Is the convoy nearby? How far, roughly?”

  “They’re about thirty minutes away,” Fingers says, her tone flat, edged with that dry amusement that usually means trouble. “On schedule. Why? Everything goin’ alright?”

  “If Dance manages to avoid pushing buttons, including mine,” I say inexorably. “We have access to the drawbridge controls. Want us to test it out? See if it works?”

  Fingers hums thoughtfully. “Yeah. Just a temporary test. Raise the bridge, and I’ll have a look.”

  With that, Dance presses the button. No confirmation code, thankfully. Not that that would’ve been much of an issue. Suddenly, the cables stretching along the walls and ceiling pulse, their thick insulation shuddering as power surges. A sharp, spitting hiss crackles from somewhere behind the panel. Not the steady hum of a system working as intended, but the angry, stuttering snarl of overworked wiring, like something straining past its limits. A single hot spark snaps through the air, fizzling out before it even touches the ground. Burnt dust, scorched metal, something dangerously close to overloading, I’m sure.

  I wait for a minute before saying, “Well?”

  “It’s rising, but it’s slow,” she says. “We’ll probably want to lift it three minutes before they’re arrival, maybe a bit before that just in case the AI decides to break the speed limit.”

  Satisfaction. Pure, raw satisfaction. “Awesome,” I say. “What’s next?”

  “Bring the bridge down again. Then, I guess we wait. You wanna slot in, test your connection? I have the spider-bot in position. Might be worth your time to get used to the controls again. Just in case.”

  I reach into my pocket and retrieve the control shard. “Sure, gimme a sec.” I slot it into my temple port and sit against the railing, rubbing my hand under my thigh, waiting for the spider-bot screen to boot up.

  Eventually, it does, and when I glance up, Fingers is staring at me. We’re on top of an apartment roof, no doubt about that. HVAC units everywhere, and the rooftop feels old, like a patch of repairs on top of repairs, tar-paper seams running like scars under her feet. Fingers stands near the edge, hands stuffed into the pockets of a brown jacket that’s clearly too big for her, the sleeves swallowing her wrists, the fabric bunched up at the shoulders like she stole it off someone twice her size. The wind tugs at it, rippling, but she barely notices, just keeps staring like she’s trying to decide if she should say something or not.

  I control the bot quickly and easily. Thanks to the last few days of practicing, my movements are smooth and respond perfectly. I rotate the bot, finding that it’s also placed on top of a HVAC unit, climb down the side, and run along the rooftop’s outer edges. I tip up over the side, peeking at the city below, zooming in. The bridge is rising, slow but steady, splitting clean down the middle like a wound opening over the canal. When it rises fully, Dance presses the panel again and slowly brings it back down. The roads at either side of the intersections are blocked off with traffic redirected. A private, scheduled route, after all. Dancers spin along the sidewalks, street vendors flipping skewers over open flames, children clutching greasy food trays and bottles of cheap soda.

  I turn the bot towards the south side and flick through the zoom, scanning the city arteries leading towards the bridge, searching. No sign of the convoy yet, as Fingers said. But soon.

  Very soon. All we have to do is wait. That’s it. Though I will have to travel quite a distance.

  We decided it was best to plant the spider-bot on the rooftop because, anywhere lower, it was likely someone from the south might have stepped on it, stolen it, or interfaced with it in ways we couldn’t have predicted. We also considered placing it under the bridge, near or within the circuitery, but realised how badly that could turn out—a pair of scavengers could and would come along to take it, no hesitation, no second thoughts.

  It’s a little more awkward, sure, because I’ll have to climb the whole way down, scurry across the street, stay low and fast, but it’s not far. It’ll get where it needs to go. And when it does, when the convoy stops at the raised bridge and the spider-bot finally makes its move, there won’t be a damn thing they can do about it.