Page 139 of Coldwire
It’s not one flight down, as Upsie’s server room was. This is a spiraling staircase, descending down and down and down so far that I am dizzy by the time my feet hit solid ground again. Before I can slow and embrace the urge to gag from a wave of nausea, Nik is hissing to keep moving, that we don’t have much time before the facility knows we’re here.
It’s dark underground. The corridor uses the same emergency exit floorlighting that hotels are so fond of, a row of red beading along either side of the linoleum tiles. There are multiple doors on both sides of the corridor, placed in close succession to one another. We bypass them all, heading for the very end of the space, where the shadows have camouflaged a right turn, descending deeper along a ramp.
I’m struggling to catch my breath. It doesn’t seem like there are any cameras, so on the next turn when we slow, I lift my ski mask the slightest bit, exposing my mouth. Somehow, Nik notices my move immediately and reaches over to tug my mask back down.
“There are night-vision sensors. Don’t do that.”
“I’m suffocating.”
“We’re almost there. Kunlun’s servers are stored in the coldest part of the facility.”
With the amount of energy it takes to run a virtual city, Offron’s data center needs foolproof cooling equipment. We keep going farther and farther—my ears pop when we round a corner, and then Nik marches straight for a door. He doesn’t bother burning past the handle this time. There’s a side panel, and he takes the fence clippers out of his bag, jamming the metal straight into the glass. A terrible noise screeches to signal malfunction, and he kicks the door open.
“Start typing,” Nik instructs, sliding his bag off his shoulder. “I’ll find maintenance ports.”
My breath is lodged in my throat. In my chest. Ballooning into a tumor and turning acrid inside of me.
There are two central screens in the small room. I go to the controller on the left, pulling open a window to start working. I don’t have the interface of a Pod here, nor the StrangeLoom code, where double-tapping Offron on the map will activate a window that shortcuts access to Kunlun. I only have raw Kunlun beneath my fingertips, entirely separated from StrangeLoom’s display. Without its interface, there’s nothing intuitive about what I’m looking at. I search through the tabs, looking for some entrance point. Ihave to remember that these controllers are here for maintenance. If a technician was running an inspection, they would have to log in somewhere.
I navigate intoView, wondering where the tester function is hiding. Kunlun citizens can enter from the Pods because Kunlun’s independent governing body made an agreement with NileCorp to install the access route on the StrangeLoom system. When data engineers run improvements here, they’d have to use their own StrangeLoom credentials too. There’s no chance Kunlun doesn’t mandate a tracking system, some way of recording every user poking their head into the city.
I hit the right series of commands and find a tester portal. The window loads a StrangeLoom page, asking for a user ID and password.
“I’ve got it!” I bellow.
“Give me a second,” Nik replies. His head pokes around from the other end of a tall shelf. “I’ve found a port for this, but I don’t see how the rack connects back to the central controller.”
I peer over the central screen. There’s a thick loop of wires stemming from the main box, streaming along the floor and then plugged into the rack at the very end.
“There,” I say, pointing to the ends of the wires. “Unplug those and move them to this rack.”
Nik nods, hurrying to yank them over. I go to the second screen, performing the same series of commands to find my way onto the tester portal. The moment I see Nik plugging in the Claws and activating their node function, I pull the list of credentials from my pocket, holding the paper close to the screen’s light. The first few combinations of user IDs and passwords don’t work. By the seventh error upon attempting to log in, I’m getting worried. A cold sweat breaks down my neck.
“Did you activate one?” Nik asks from the racks.
“No, I think that was the building shaking,” I mutter. I try number ten. Error. “Look, if this doesn’t work, I think maybe we need to bring Blare down and—”
The pop-up disappears on the screen. It worked. Number twelve on the list of credentials is valid. I allow myself one beat to scan the screen, confirm that the fuzzy image is definitely Kunlun’s rendering, ready for someone to enter with the Claw and see the full photorealistic picture. Then I go back to the first screen and continue down the list.
Number fifteen works too.
Nik watches me put the printout back in my pocket. “We’re in?”
“We’re in,” I confirm. I pull my ski mask off entirely. Within these shelves, I have to assume that we’re in a blind spot for camera functionality. “Ready for access.”
Nik pulls his ski mask off too. He’s as serious as a funeral pyre. Posture dead straight, shoulders pulled taut. He hands me a Claw.
“After you.”
A shiver runs down my spine. I’m hesitant to reach for the Claw, my fingers suddenly stiff and cold where they weren’t before. When I take it, a pang emits from the base of my head. It’s not quite pain. Just a peculiar sort of revulsion. I touch my hairline, trying to trace its source, and it’s perfectly where my chip should be. The very item that allows my connection to upcountry when I put this device on.
“Is everything okay?” Nik prompts.
I nod quickly. No feeling is strong enough to counter my desire to get into Kunlun. To finally return to a location I can’t remember. Despite my increasing waves of dread, I take a seat where I’ll be able to lean against the server rack, and I put the nodes over my head.
“See you up there,” I say.
I close my eyes.
