As the mangled box tumbled towards the fiery flow far below, a strange sense of relief kept Quinn from leaping in after it. The reflections on the polished box flickered between the flames and his still-horrified face. The distant echo of a dozen yells ripped him from the moment and back into the present, causing him to whirl and scan the crowd down below. His heart wrenched as he pushed himself up into a stumbling sprint towards the elevator.

  The heavy, ancient doors shuddered with a reverberating groan as he slammed the open button.

  "Useless Roughworks fossil, MOVE!"

  Gunfire broke out in the distance, making the decision for him. He closed his eyes, pressing his palms to the cold steel of the massive doors. On contact, his mind burst with new information and disappointment.

  "Young human, is Elevator not moving at an acceptable rate? Elevator is designed for 2.5 meters per second for ascent and 10.5 meters per second for descent."

  Quinn snorted despite the chaos. "I need your doors open; it's dangerous for me outside." He felt the doors shudder again in response.

  "Doors require repair. Please repair doors before safe use can be guaranteed."

  His anger and fear surged. He pushed his will into the doors.

  "Understood, compliance to override protocol. Total mechanical alteration affected."

  The doors screeched in warning, giving him just a moment to jump back before each slammed aside with a crunch of gears. He rushed to the edge and looked past the now-screaming pulleys and cables down into the dark, flickering shaft below.

  "You're dead, Whitlocke!"

  Quinn whipped around to face the owner of the voice. The enshadowed figure began reaching into his jacket, slowly pulling out a weapon. Quinn slipped a coin from his sleeve as he stared into the man's eyes, flipping it high into the air.

  "Heads."

  Quinn grinned and let himself fall backwards into the darkness.

  "In the early years of the conflict, The Spider was a pawn of the scholar-state. Within a few years it was clear to us all that the web had grown larger than anyone could have imagined." - Joss Mayflower

  Quinn slammed a fist down on the table. The echoes seemed to shake the bookshelves, leaving his companion surprised, eyes wide and brows raised. The thundercloud of anger churning in his mind brought a torrent of memories crashing over him, each one flooding back to the surface. He and his father at the forge, cutting and welding scraps. His mother's disapproval of the makeshift furnace in his bedroom. His first candle machine, scrapped together and coaxed into functionality through sheer determination. His first sale, the praise of his father’s forge-mates. His apprenticeship under his father, soon giving way to his journeyman training under Maven Lance Zai, the Director of Engineering at the Royal Rheidenas Academy. Working long hours in the lab with Joss and the rest of the team. Now they had lost the lead bought by years of hard work when they were so close to completion.

  "Blast it all Joss!" Quinn said. "We were so close! Somebody couldn't keep their mouth shut. Who could have let this much slip?"

  "It's bad, yes, but for now we should get out of the library." said Joss with a shushing motion.

  Depositing the offending paper into his satchel, Joss spared a glance back at his enraged friend.

  "C'mon, let's grab some sunshine – I think we can both use a break from this crypt. We will figure this out" Joss said, clapping Quinn on the shoulder and heading to the door.

  He was hiding it well but Joss was dazed, it felt like his world was crumbling around him. It had been early in their apprenticeships under the Zai couple, Joss under Maven Liora Zai and Quinn under Maven Lance Zai, that they had first met. They had helped each other with their journeyman's projects and been sharing ideas for years, right up to their current and compromised venture.

  Quinn pushed himself to his feet and gathered his tools. There was still hope but they had to do some damage control. The premise of their senior project at the Royal Rheidenas Academy had been published in a prominent academic newspaper. He knew it wasn't the fault of Carios, a longtime friend and the head of the Printer's Guild, but this still felt like a betrayal to see the work of machines he knew so well stabbing him in the back.

  He appreciated that Joss wasn't hurt by his outburst, and regretted lashing out. Quinn knew that this situation wasn't his alone to bear, but would affect their whole team. Despite the rising tightness in his chest, he pushed through to the surface. He and Joss now had to track everyone down and push up the development timeline….a lot.

  They walked and worried through the winding stone halls. The cavernous library deep below the buildings and gardens above was silent other than their footfalls and the occasional whispers from somewhere in the stacks. The tunnels, carved out centuries before, had seen many an agonized student in the throes of the academic lifestyle. The books huddled on the shelves above, so seemingly indifferent to their frustration, may have changed their tune if they only knew the ramifications of the coming storm promised by the plodding steps of the men below.

  Several students rushed down the spiral staircase ahead of the pair, exchanging nods numbly as they passed. The library had a reputation for being the reluctant first choice for study and research. The cold halls swallowed up any who entered, promising solitude and focus. Almost everywhere else at RRA had the same harsh stone, whether natural or brick. The library, however, did not have windows or sunlight. Busy students rushed with and by them to and from meetings with their instructing Mavens.

  "There's a solution to this, you know," Joss said with a sidelong glance at Quinn. "We need to talk to Mellissa."

  Quinn winced. Throughout his time at RRA, he had made many lasting friendships with students and professors. Very few friends had had such an important impact on his academic life as Astator of Sentient Sciences, Mellissa Cairn. As a freshly minted RRA student, he had first been subjected to intense grammatical scrutiny in his Sentient Science language courses. Despite being a rock-solid communicator, the use of pen and paper quickly proved mentally excruciating for him. Mellissa had coached him through dozens of office hour visits, whipping him into Academy standard academic shape with her sharp tongue and smirk. She was also an incorrigible gossip, able to rattle off the latest rumors or hearsay at the slightest prompting.

  "Director Zai is going to have me tossed into the river when she finds out," said Quinn.

  "Quinn, this isn't your fault. We knew there was a risk of this happening, Zai told us that herself. This project is special! So many people would love to get their hands on it, and so many would want it to fail. We've all been taking proactive steps to protect our research data and prototypes according to the guidelines!" said Joss.

  "For all the good it did us," grumbled Quinn, shaking his head. He moved aside at the top of the stairwell to let a clique of crisply uniformed underclassmen pass by. He knew he was wallowing in his anger when he ought to be considering what to do next. He knew that's what his mother would point out. For the moment, his only goal was to leave the grim scene of the Academy behind. Joss led him through the flying arches of the main floor's halls, his own thoughts overtaken by the bustle around them. Joss wasn't as angry as Quinn, but his sadness was exceedingly deep. They had worked hard, long, and late hours with their team to make something of their breakthrough – now he realized that many of his dreams were in jeopardy. He shook himself from his stupor, his eyes locking with a familiar face looking as distraught as he felt.

  "Joss! Quinn! What happened?" demanded Haru, her twin brother Reid grimly looking over her shoulder, mirroring the sentiment. Their long dark hair fell over their uniforms, their most dominant sibling feature. The Asplund twins had been their project partners for the last two years. Quinn had first met Haru in a biological research course, hitting it off immediately and growing closer as they worked together in labs throughout several courses. Reid had won an award at RRA for his academic excellence. Maven Zai orchestrated a meeting between Reid and Joss, and soon the four had begun working together.

  "We just learned that the project is being discussed publicly?" Haru asked in a tense, hushed tone. "How did this happen? We were so meticulous and invested so much time..."

  Joss made a placating gesture. "We don't know either but we’re gonna figure this out. Right now we need to establish how much has been compromised and then decide how to move forward."

  "Quinn, are you okay? You don't look so good." asked Reid.

  "No." said Quinn. "I need to think about this. Can you two start checking around? Try and find out how the leak happened."

  Only then did Quinn bring his eyes up to meet those of Haru and Reid, his gaze pleading for support. Haru's expression softened.

  "Of course Quinn. To be clear, we do not blame you for any of this." said Haru. "We just weren't careful enough. We must have forgotten something in the lab overnight and someone got in and saw it. This is a massive setback but we can handle this as a team."

  Reid nodded.

  "This isn't your fault, Quinn. We'll start talking to the underclassman brats snooping around in the evenings and figure out who needs a jaw realignment" he said, cracking his knuckles.

  Joss gave him a weak smile. "Just don't dig us any deeper into a hole until we get out of this one please."

  Reid gave a joking salute as he and Haru turned and started down the large access hall toward the lab rooms in the Engineering college’s sector of the RRA building. They disappeared around the bend in the looping circular hall terminating at each end of the large square atrium which served as the main entryway to the building.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Quinn took a deep breath, vacantly scanning the metal framework of the building’s glass dome far above, reinforced with intricate patterns, shadows of outside horizontal rings encircling the dome. The glass enclosed the atrium far above them in the heart of the academy’s massive sprawling building.

  "I really do need some time to think about this, let's go to the park at Heartland Haven," Quinn said, “We always do our best work under open sky.”

  The two men exited the shadowy halls of the academy, stepping into the golden afternoon light that bathed the courtyard. At the gates they quickly hailed a ride from the odd herd of steel coaches and drawn carriages. Soon the rumble and clicks of their coach’s engine resounded where silence otherwise reigned once again. Leaning back, Joss pulled a notebook from his satchel, studying the recent commands he had been drafting for their prototype.

  "I don't think the core program leaked," said Joss, "There were no details, it was the physical draft for the variable-state system."

  "So worst case scenario then," groaned Quinn. "We inherited so much of the system from Lance that we basically lost any advantage we had. It's practically a miracle I matched the tolerance of his specifications. Reid still hadn't cracked the chemical makeup last we knew though, right?"

  "He still had no clue," Joss replied. "All he said was that it reacts nominally to the cooling agent, and that he feels hungry after direct contact."

  Quinn grinned despite himself. "Reid better not eat it. Maybe it's secretly Tuzzop Guild jam from the sandwiches Reid keeps sneaking into the lab or something."

  Joss smiled back. "I guess if we can't figure out what it actually is, it can't leak," he said. “We should still send a message to Mellissa.”

  Quinn reluctantly pulled his voxcom from its holster, where it had been resting in the dim light cast through the cab's window. He read the text display and his blood turned to ice.

  S | ID 1903 | 188:07:20:13:45:58 | PD: LZ

  R | ID 591032 | PD: QW

  # Tomorrow, my office. Bring a plan and make it good.

  # Zai

  Quinn stared at the text, forcing down the dread creeping into his mind. Typically he was pleased to receive a message from Liora, but the curt words made her agitation evident. She wanted answers, from him specifically. He continued to stare until Joss' voice broke through his thoughts.

  "... here let me read it," said Joss, moving to the seat beside Quinn. "Oh. She's pissed. Fair enough."

  Quinn was already deep in thought and barely heard him. They owed so much to Liora. Her husband, Lance, had entrusted them with his prototype for the variable state machine. The device had been able to do little more than store basic information at the start, integers and encoded strings of characters. Quinn had assisted by creating a miniaturized flash crystallization device to capture a moment's value. In the early stages this had been an important step for reliable data retrieval. Joss, with the oversight of Liora, had continued refining the system of codecs required for data storage in such a chaotic state. The precise mechanics had become Quinn's obsession over the years, tuning them closer and closer to perfection.

  Hoping to bridge further into the digital renaissance of the Bjornovian Confederacy, a nearby starnation, the Zais had arranged a diplomatic visit nearly a decade before. Lance and Liora were firm believers in free availability of information for the education of all, having been stymied by their own access to resources as trade of information took over as an industry, and free information sharing decreased. They had set out to create an information storage system on the scale of the Bjornovans, mirroring their incredible growth in innovation. Early interaction between the civilizations had led to what Liora had called "bad habits". Bjornovian scholars hoarded information, and treated it almost as a currency. The Zais’ RRA partners and sponsors gradually chose to pursue private research as the information trade industry became more lucrative. The couple had had no recourse but to continue research on their own. Eventually they each found promising specialists and had snatched them up as their apprentices, the two becoming catalysts for the couple's dream.

  Quinn considered the words of the offending journal. The reader base of The Noble Trendsetter was wide-reaching, though not as popular as the international Rheidella Reporter. Trendsetter had been established during the unification of the Royal Colleges, appealing to the countless academics and the hungry minds of researchers. They had broken stories on numerous discoveries within the institution in recent years and had an excellent reputation for accuracy and quick coverage. Unfortunately its reputation worked against Quinn this time, as it meant that it was a foregone conclusion that the information had been widely disseminated. Many interested parties would already be looking to replicate the crystallization state machine as they raced the team to obtain Adeios, the mysterious and puzzling substance passed on by Lance.

  He shifted his gaze to the streets going by. The cobbled roads of the districts near RRA had given way to pavement and the towering buildings of the port district nearing the Nioka river that cut through the heart of the city. The cover of the intricate structures dozens of stories above blocked the sun from view as they drove through the cool shadows of the superstructures. Soon they joined the queue of coaches and cycles climbing up toward the cabled spires of the river bridge. The reflections of the sun breaking through the trestles lit up the metal and glass of the piloted carriages, coaches, and rumbling trains along each side of the central highway.

  The heat of the day had finally begun to drop as they stepped out into the refreshing open air of Heartland Haven river park. Quinn slung his bag over a shoulder and walked with Joss after paying the coach fare. The deep green of the trees contrasting against the river in the background was always comforting to him after thousands of hours spent in thought below their branches. The winding cobbled path through the topiaries eventually led to the flagstone clearing revealing fountains and open cabanas along the river. Both men caught sight of a lone familiar figure across the park with auburn hair, maroon and black uniform to match their own, and one leg dangling over the concrete bank of the water's edge as she sketched.

  "We should tell her," said Joss.

  "I don't want to stress her out. Let's say hi and then I can tell her later once we have this figured out" Quinn replied.

  Joss looked at him sideways. "You'll tell her? We can talk to her together."

  She turned as they approached, eyes shining as she saw them.

  "Well if you wanted to be in the picture you could have just asked, you don't have to blend into the scenery to get into the frame" said Lillian.

  "Hi Lily" said Quinn, "We're just here to-"

  "-see if you'd be part of our team for the exit exams!" Joss said, cutting him off.

  Quinn's eyes bulged, head pivoting to stare at Joss. Lily smiled wide and put down her sketch.

  "I accept, on one condition" she said. "I want an introduction from Quinn to the Printer's Guild."

  "Done" the men said in unison, exchanging glances. They often found themselves oddly in sync when it came to their reaction to Lily.

  "Excellent! Ideally I would like to get that introduction this week, would that be possible?" she asked.

  "How about tomorrow at midday? We can get some lunch and I can set up a meeting with Carios" Quinn said, poorly attempting to stifle his enthusiasm.

  "Perfect! Well I spent too much time sketching already so I will see you tomorrow Q. See you later Joss!" she said, hopping up and waving as she strolled away, sketch in hand.

  "I will never understand how Sentient Science students have that much free time." said Joss.

  "No kidding." Quinn agreed, "But I'll find the time, anything is worth it to get her on the team."

  They found an unoccupied cabana and soon Quinn had pulled a pile of bits and bobs from his backpack, tinkering as they talked, while Joss simply enjoyed the afternoon breeze blowing inland. Airships rode the winds above them, with sprawling fins of canvas, and docking cables swinging.

  "Let's look at the big picture. We need to complete the mass storage solution. We have a prototype based around Adeios, and a system for state-locking it for reads. Writing data to it digitally is easy, but our processing speed is not fast enough to carefully handle it for read operations within the substance’s coolant at a similar speed because it requires the same pattern of input to prompt an output." Joss listed. Digital storage was extremely expensive, with only a few functional storage solutions between military and research entities. A high density storage solution would be prohibitively expensive to the standard citizen.

  "I can coax operating speeds higher. We just haven't tested them" said Quinn, "But we have to match at least baseline digital speeds, or it will never be taken seriously. Standard physical tape solutions for storage are slow and expensive, so if we can’t even reach those speeds…"

  They sat for a moment considering. Quinn pulled out his sketches from his bag, looking again at his blueprints for the read mechanism. The read method was slower than the write due to mechanical limitations. Then a thought hit him. Why was he trying to force the read function to operate faster? Why would he not take advantage of the nature of the substance to instantly change state? He would simply set up parallel operations, with several inputs and outputs writing and reading.

  "We have to go wide Joss!" he said. "Parallel processing, multiple channels of data flow."

  "I can't believe we didn't think of that!" Joss exclaimed. "The Bjornovans were talking about how important that was to their advancement. We didn't think to implement that with the Adeios since as a storage solution it was barely considered analog let alone digital."

  It was on the return trip from a diplomatic visit tagging along with the Zais to the nearby Bjornovian Confederacy that Quinn and Joss had gotten their first taste of starshuttles and space travel. The incredible digital infrastructure of the Bjornovans around the exchange of information had led to the earliest inspiration for their brainstorming.

  "Wait! Why would we limit ourselves to parallel processing?" asked Quinn. "Joss, we have to help Reid with the chemical analysis. Imagine if we could take this even wider!"

  "What do you mean?" asked Joss, looking confused.

  "Imagine dozens of storage machines." said Quinn.

  "Well yeah, that's the plan once we figure out the chemical makeup, we can move to mass production." said Joss.

  "No no no, look!" blurted Quinn.

  Quinn took out his voxcom, pantomiming it into contact with the prototype blueprint and nodding emphatically. He mouthed the words “Wireless Network” at Joss. They looked at each other eyes wide.

  They both lost it, grabbing notebooks and pens furiously writing, as if desperate to put idea to blueprint before it disappeared. They had both entered a flow state, having brief exchanges as they worked. Quinn tooled and formed his sketch into the match of the picture he rotated and examined in his mind. Joss dredged into his deepest memories of their time with the Zais and the many principles he had learned by studying Liora’s work and the Bjornovian technology as he began to write pseudocode for the processing program. He had dug into the programming of his voxcom after he’d finally been able to purchase one after its release, just as he had done with other machines throughout his life. The voxcom network was a more standardized form of utilizing frequency resonance to broadcast messages through repeaters throughout the cities. While the handheld devices had been an incredible boost for direct communications, messages were limited in length, and the vocal functions only worked in ideal conditions within direct line of sight. An improvement for the attached storage was already in public demand, but this new concept would be a paradigm shift for Rheidenas if realized.

  Liora Dfemonn, once a shuttle scientist, had journeyed from the distant starnation of The Nekadian Territories to undergo training by Sakelko Space Engineering on Nahau. Whilst there she met a visiting junior pilot and mechanic Lance Zai. She soon caught his love for exploration and learning, following him to his homeworld of Rheidella. She quickly established herself as an authority on foreign technologies and systems for adaptation of international standards with the government, and they were both offered positions at RRA not long after their wedding. Liora had begrudgingly shown Joss their collection of artifacts from their many adventures. Despite this fact, she had had very little to offer about the Adeios. Lance evidently had possessed the substance before the two had met, as it was labeled as having been obtained during his early years attending the academy.

  "We need to ask Liora again. Even if she really doesn't have any more information for us on the origin of the Adeios, maybe there is something we haven't caught onto yet. I’m sure Reid would take anything else and run with it, even just a rough location could be enough for us to find more of it."

  He began to pack his satchel as Quinn considered.

  "Is she going to be in the mood to dig deeper into Lance's stuff? It seems like she's more likely to... yell." said Quinn.

  Joss shook his head. "I don't know. All we can do is ask."

  Quinn nodded at that, and began to pack his own bag for the day's end. The sky had begun to fill with the rippling colors of plasma in the magnetosphere. The phenomena had become more frequent over the last few years, and the public had grown to enjoy the spectacle in the evenings. He had noticed a recent opening on the RRA announcement board which had listed a research position dedicated to studying the anomaly.

  As they watched the dancing sunset, Quinn couldn't help but notice something new – heavy machinery with claws and cranes clearing out an old industrial zone across the river. Most day workers would be ending their shifts and starting their dinners, but a clearing at the site was being filled with materials, and flashes of welding and fusing cast quick shadows against walls.

  Joss followed his gaze. "Hey, look at that." he said, squinting against the sun's glare.

  Quinn leaned forward, intrigued. "What do you think it is?"

  Rumors had been circulating about a new spaceport being built in the city, but no one knew for sure if it was true or just speculation. The current port serviced aquatic and galactic vessels. Some recent diplomatic entourages from other systems scorned the "barbaric" lack of facilities for vacuum-only starshuttles. The word was that the Crown had evidently been embarrassed.

  Joss shrugged. "I don't know, man. But I heard whispers that this might be part of some bigger plan to expand our connection with the other planets."

  Quinn's eyes widened as he took in the implications. Space travel was expensive on Rheidenas, and mostly limited to the military and business with some diplomatic and political exceptions. It was also a very limited pipeline for a normal person, as starshuttles rated for distance travel and many passengers were relatively new. A new and larger public spaceport could mean a whole new level of access and opportunities for trade and exploration beyond the military and merchants...

  "I'm going to head home, it's been a long day. See you tomorrow." said Joss.

  Quinn waved as Joss headed back towards his home in the Trees District. He spent a few more moments watching the activity across the river. It really had been a long day he realized, without a moment to rest. He was exhausted. The morning had started with his typical errand run, before getting himself put together and heading to his Emerging Materials course, followed by study with Joss for their shared Entropic Statistics class.

  At midday, the school had an assembly to announce the details and format for the graduation exams. The anticipation had been tangible as the auditorium filled with the prospective graduates. Each had hopes of achieving their License of Expertise, and moving on into further study or professional life. They had been instructed on how to prepare for what would be an exceptionally well rounded test of their skill sets. Students would be allowed to form their own groups of five and register before the month was up, but all ungrouped students would be assigned groups. Not all were guaranteed success, and would need to finish the tests with enough points to graduate. They had all been preparing for this opportunity, the nearly mythical Trial Night.

  He pulled out his voxcom, drafting and sending a quick message.

  S | ID 591032 | 188:07:20:21:14:08 | PD: QW

  R | ID 515540 | PD: MC

  # Hi Mellissa, got time tomorrow morning? You won't believe what we heard today.

  Quinn crossed his fingers, and hoped Mellissa could get to the bottom of this leak for them.