Page 84 of Coldwire
I tilt my head. “She?”
Kieren shrugs, lifting his hands to imitate typing. “I thought I heard long nails. Presumptuous of me, I guess, sorry.”
“Hmm.” I lean against the window. The glass is warm, and I step onto the raised ledge on the floor to get closer. “So. Elite cyber division.”
“What? It’s a very high-paying position.”
“It’s atypical,” I say. “Don’t act surprised that I’m surprised. Or you wouldn’t have been keeping it a secret.”
Kieren scoffs. “We’re not exactly the best of buddies, Lia. Prior to this posting, when would I have sat down next to you to tell you about my career dreams and aspirations?”
“There have actually been many times when you sat down next to me unprompted to talk.”
“Yeah,” Kieren mutters. “About the teachers. Or the lesson. Not…”
The vulnerable stuff. The stuff that I could use, and weaponize, and turn against him. He doesn’t need to say it. I get the gist.
What makes Kieren’s aspirations toward the cyber division so bizarre is its lack of respectability, and if Kieren is anything in a nutshell, he is respectable. The cyber division used to be known for sharing resources with the StrangeLoom division. As the years passed, it kept getting into scandals with international incidents, with Medaluo’s accusations, and now it’s mostly known for having Atahua’s hackers. A good fraction of the cold war is fought by launching malware at each other over the ether. There’s no honor, no integrity. Someone who trains out of Nile Military Academy doesn’t aspire to go to that department. It isn’t even a division where people get posted. It only accepts candidates on rolling applications.
“I truly don’t understand,” I say after a long pause. “I know you don’t owemean explanation, but you’ve spent so many years tearing yourself apart for academic excellence—”
Kieren tries to interrupt. “I haven’t been tearing myself apart—”
“You have been, becauseIhave been, and if you respect me at all, then you’ll admit it,” I snap. “Out of anyone, you can’t lie to me. I know what it takes to keep up those grades, and I know how strongly you have to feel about what results come of it.” I swallow hard. My throat is dry. “So what gives?”
He must know that, most likely, there’s nothing we can do at this point to one-up each other. Whatever happens at the end of this posting, the outcome of valedictorian may as well be decided by a coin toss between our two names. He may as well treat me as a friend.
“What gives is that NileCorp is separated by head of security and head of cyber division,” Kieren says tiredly. “My dad was former head of security. Despite his retirement, despite his current role, he has the right to pull files on all the private forces under NileCorp security. Once we’re signed under that branch, we give up our claim to privacy. He’d be able to access my display if I’m upcountry. He could see what I’m doing at any point. Mylocation, my data, my suit recordings downcountry. He’d seeeverythingno matter which unit I’m assigned to….” Kieren looks away, his arms crossed tightly enough that his shirt fabric will be marred permanently. “Unless I’m elsewhere.”
I hold my breath for so long that my lungs start to burn. I force myself to exhale, bit by bit.
“I didn’t realize,” I say when I’ve recovered, “that you hated him so much.”
“I don’t,” Kieren counters at once. “I love him. He was my hero. I looked forward to Saturdays in elementary school because he could come home and take me and Hailey out to the park, and when we’d fight over who got to ride inside the tire swing for Dad to push, he’d say he was strong enough to push us both.” The hint of a smile presses at his lips, his eyes lost in the memory. “I wanted to be just like him when I grew up.”
That doesn’t sound much like Headmaster Murray. I don’t say it aloud, but Kieren must know I’m thinking it. His gaze flickers up.
“Yeah,” he says in confirmation. “Not the man you know, right?”
“People change,” I say weakly. “Stress, work…”
“I suppose so. But you asked for an explanation, so here’s mine: I have to get away from his watch. I think NileCorp did something to change him, and I’m going to prove it.”
23EIRALE
The night wind cuts underneath my sleeves, slicing a trail with each cold howl. I lean over the roof edge. No barrier. Fifty-five stories feels very, very high from the top.
“All right, I think we’ve got it. I should be able to fly the drone from my glasses.”
Miz tosses the drone up, and it stays floating, calibrating to its surroundings. The horizon doesn’t so much twinkle as it buzzes, filled with innumerable sources of digital light. If it’s not the underside of lower apartment windows wired with glowing repellent to keep out the mosquitoes, it is the roving red patterns dancing down the skyscrapers, tracing their glass surfaces. If it’s not the flicker of the billboards installed on the street level, it is their reflections, sparkling off the wet puddles filling the potholes in the road. It must have rained over Threto earlier today. A faint trace of humidity still lingers.
“Careful,” Nik warns. “If you fling it out of range, you’re going to disconnect, and then we can’t get it back.”
“I’m not going to fling it out of range.”
“Really, Miz? Because your hand is pulling back right now in a way that makes me think you’re about to fling it out of range.”
Chided, Miz lowers her hand, waving it to erase the trajectory she must have been drawing in her glasses. The drone will take one end of the zip line and lock it onto the rooftop we want. Then the drone has to hover there until we arrive, pull the zip line back, and repeat the process.
