They split without discussion.
That was how it worked when Wrench was in a situation — not because anyone appointed her, but because
she moved first and with enough certainty that moving differently required a decision nobody had time to
make. She took the eastern concourse, the transit junction, the maintenance corridors she'd memorized down
to which fixtures were burned out and which were just dim. If Riko had been separated in the smoke he'd
have gone for high ground or a known route. She knew his known routes. She'd taught him half of them.
Jax took the sub-levels. He moved through them the way he moved through everything — easy, unhurried,
with the slightly-off quality that nobody had named yet, checking angles and shadows with the focused
efficiency of a man for whom this had become reflex long before anyone in this city had met him.
Koshva took the upper concourse. He walked it with the face he'd worn in Valentina's corridor and the hands
he was keeping very deliberately at his sides and the specific quality of controlled speed that was almost but
not quite running, because running attracted attention and attention was the one thing they categorically
could not afford right now.
Dokja and Vance held the alcove.
Vance because someone had to stay with the exit point in case Riko found his own way back.
Dokja because Vance was staying and Dokja had decided approximately forty minutes ago that he was not
leaving Vance alone in any configuration that didn't have someone watching him. This decision lived entirely
behind his eyes. His face was doing something else.
'Think,' he told himself. 'You are very good at thinking. Riko knows this city better than anyone with a badge.
Riko has never once been wrong about a person. Riko took your death harder than he showed and came
back anyway.'
'Riko is twelve years old and he is somewhere in this city and you do not know where.'
The fury was there. It had been there since the alcove, since the count, since the one beat of silence that had
stretched into the shape of an absence. It sat behind his sternum like something with edges, patient and hot,
and he was not showing it because showing it helped nobody and helped Riko least of all.
He looked at Vance.
Vance was looking at nothing in particular with that pleasant expression that never wavered. His hands were
folded. Completely, perfectly still.
Dokja looked at his hands.
Looked away.
An hour passed. Then two.
Wrench came back first. The look on her face was the look of a woman who had checked every route, every
blind spot, every high point between the eastern concourse and the sub-level access and found nothing.
Koshva came back and stood against the wall and did not put his face in his hands. That was worse than if he
had.
Jax came back last. He leaned against the opposite wall and crossed his arms and said nothing, which was
so profoundly unlike him that it landed in the alcove like a third kind of silence on top of the two already there.
Nobody said anything useful because there was nothing useful to say.
Wrench pulled out her primary device. Checked the tracker she'd installed in Riko's jacket three months ago
without mentioning it, because Wrench did things like that.
The tracker showed nothing. Offline.
Her device made a sound it had never made before.
Not a notification. Not a call. A sound that meant something had accessed her system from outside, which
was not possible, which had never been possible.
She looked at her device.
An unfamiliar interface had opened itself on her screen with the calm confidence of something that had
always had permission to be there and simply hadn't needed to use it until now.
Text. No identifier. No origin point she could read.
He's fine. Breathing. No damage.
Wrench stared at it.
He's fine. Breathing. No damage.
I need twenty minutes of your time. All of you. In exchange, you get the kid back and I answer every question
you've been too careful to ask since I walked through your door.
— M
Wrench looked up.
Her expression was the expression of a woman confronting a professional violation so precise and so
complete that the anger hadn't fully arrived yet because her mind was still trying to understand the mechanics
of how it had happened. Her devices were her livelihood. Her security was her reputation. She had systems
inside systems, redundancies the Authority's own technicians would have needed a week to find.
Micheal had gotten in anyway.
Without abilities. Without a system ping. Without leaving a single trace she could find on a first pass, or a
second.
"He's in my devices," she said. The words came out very flat.
Nobody said anything.
The device made the sound again.
Wrench. I've been in your devices for six days. I haven't touched anything. I'm not interested in your files. I
needed a channel that Valentina's monitoring couldn't intercept.
I'm telling you this because you deserve to know, and because I suspect you'd rather have the honest version
than find it yourself and draw the wrong conclusion.
Twenty minutes.
Wrench read it twice.
Then she looked at Dokja.
Dokja was looking at the device with the face he'd worn in front of the Prime Warden. The face that had held
in Valentina's corridor. The face built for rooms where showing what was behind it was a liability.
Behind it, the fury had found a new address.
"Twenty minutes," Dokja said.
His voice came out level. He was doing it deliberately.
"Tell him yes