Chương 4: The Kid in the Vent

The warrens were the one thing in the Stack I'd have bet my life I knew. Running for that life, I found out I'd bet wrong. I'd dropped four levels toward Errata's freight-spine, moving the way I work, fast, low, not looking, my body running the route while my head stayed free to listen for the cull. It was back there, not close, not far. That flat, steady processing-rhythm, working the levels in order, unhurried. A man with a list.

I had a junction in my head, a four-way I'd used a thousand times that fed straight onto the spine, and I came around into it already turning toward the throat that led down. The throat was welded. A bulkhead plate, fresh, the seam still bright. Someone had closed my route since the last time I ran it, and I'd been so sure of the map that I'd nearly put my face into it at speed." Huh,"said Errata, with interest." That's new. The System's been tidying. It does that.

Closes the routes that don't appear on any plan, because a route that isn't filed is a route it can't audit."

"It's a dead end."" It's a dead end with a sweep four minutes behind it, which upgrades it to a problem."

"You're going the dumb way," said a third voice, from the vent. I had a piece of the System's enforcement in my arm and a piece of its bureaucracy in my skull. So I'd like to say a new voice in a sealed junction got something better out of me than nearly tearing the grille off the wall on reflex. I'd like to say that.

She was in the return vent above the welded throat, folded into a space I wouldn't have thought held a cat, looking down at me with the flat unimpressed expression of someone watching an adult be slow. Maybe fourteen. Filthy on purpose, and practiced at it for a long time, because clean is a thing that gets noticed. A scavenger's rig of scrounged tools across her chest, every one of them stripped down past its serial.

She had a smear of conduit-grease on one cheek and the steadiest eyes I'd seen since the lights turned blue.

"The throat's been welded a week," she said.

"Everyone who runs the spine knows that. You didn't, so you don't run the spine. The sweep's in this junction in three minutes and you die in it. That's your business. Except you're loud. Loud brings them onto the vent I'm using. That makes it mine."" Oh, I like her,"Errata said." She did a cost-benefit analysis on your survival in real time and you came out a liability. That's just good practice." I did the same math, faster, and out loud only in my head. Kid. Knows the live routes.

Knows which ones the System closed and when. Has a vent I can't see the far end of. The cull four minutes back and tightening.

"You know the way down that isn't welded," I said. I didn't ask it like a question, and I didn't say please.

"I know six." She didn't move.

"What've you got."

"A sweep that's going to be on both of us if you keep negotiating."" She's not wrong to negotiate," Errata noted, helpfully, to me, where the kid couldn't hear it." You're a far worse risk to her than she is to you. You're carrying an anomaly profile and a glowing arm. If I were her I'd want hazard pay." The kid's eyes had gone to the arm. The core sat under the skin of my forearm with a faint blue seam-glow where the install hadn't finished settling.

She looked at it the way I look at a part: pricing it, sorting it, deciding what it was worth and whether it was worth the trouble it came attached to. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"That's a System core," she said.

"In your arm. You can't run a System core, nobody can run a System core, they cook you. You're cooked. You don't look cooked."

"I'm full of surprises. The way down." Behind and above, the processing-rhythm changed pitch, not louder, nearer. The kid heard it too. I watched her recalculate, the whole thing happening behind those steady eyes in about a second. The loud cooked stranger was a liability. But she was also the most interesting thing to drop into her warren in a week, and the sweep was coming for both of them now whether she liked it or not.

"Vent behind me feeds a chase that drops to the spine two junctions over," she said, already moving, fast and economical, no wasted inch.

"It's tight. You'll hate it. Don't touch the left wall after the bend, there's a live bus they never capped. And if you get me killed I'm going to be extremely unpleasant about it."

"You'll be dead."

"I'll find a way." I went up into the vent after her. It hadn't been built for a grown woman and resented me the whole way, and Errata, delighted, narrated." Left wall after the bend, she said, and you immediately drifted left, because you are tired and stupid. There, good, off it. She's better in here than you are, you realize. By a lot. You navigate the Underdecks like a tech who fixed it. She navigates it like a thing that lives in it."

"Which way," I said, low, to the kid's heels.

"Down-left at the split, then it opens. You always talk to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Weird." I followed her down-left at the split, and the chase opened just as she'd called it. Below us the spine ran black and cold and gloriously unimportant. And the sweep hit the junction we'd left, exactly when she'd said, the welded dead-end lighting up behind us with the white of System attention reading an empty room. It read it. It found two heat-traces leaving up a vent that wasn't on its plan. And it stopped culling in its patient order, and it turned."

Down,"Errata said, and the lightness was gone, gone the second the joke stopped being affordable." Down now, both of you. That's not the cull anymore. The cull works a list. That just left the list." We dropped onto the freight-spine in a tangle, the kid landing like she'd practiced it and me landing like furniture. We ran the dark spine four junctions before the kid put a hand flat on my chest and stopped me in a maintenance dead-end barely deep enough to hide one of us, let alone two and a glowing arm.

We stood there breathing. Above and behind, the wrong-sounding thing worked the vent we'd used, slower than the cull, more careful, reading as it came. The kid looked at me. She was not scared, she was curious.

"That changed for you," she said.

"It was doing the whole level. Then you went up my vent and it stopped doing the level and started doing you."" She's quick,"Errata murmured." She figured out in ninety seconds what it's going to take the rest of the Stack the rest of the apocalypse to learn about you."

"It's not looking for the crowd anymore," I said, mostly to Errata, and the kid heard the part that was for her.

"It's looking for you," she finished. She wiped the grease on her cheek into a longer smear, considering.

"And whoever's with you. Right now that's me." She didn't say it like a complaint. She said it like a line item.

"So. New deal. I get you off Twelve and down to where the spine forks, where it's never swept because there's nothing down there worth the System's time, and you tell me how you've got a System core in your arm and you're not cooked. Because I want one, and I'm not stupid enough to put one in without knowing what it costs."" Pay her,"Errata advised." She's worth it, and the alternative is finding our own way out, which, on tonight's evidence, we are bad at."

I looked at the kid, at the steady eyes, the stripped tools, the warren she wore like a coat, and I didn't feel what I was supposed to feel. I felt the cold, clean click of an asset sliding into place. Routes I didn't have. A guide who'd already proven she'd rather live than be loyal, which made her predictable, which made her safe to use. A body between me and the System's new and personal attention.

"The way to the fork," I said.

"And I'll tell you what the core costs. It costs you everything you are, a little at a time, and it never stops, and right now I'd do it again without thinking, so don't take career advice from me." I started down the spine.

"That's the deal. Walk." The kid fell in beside me, unbothered, like she got told the price of damnation by glowing strangers most days.

"I'm Sefa," she said.

"I didn't ask."" She didn't ask,"Errata agreed, warmly, to me alone." You're going to be such good friends."