As Enzokuhle shouted him through drills, he pushed the organizational changes and revoked privileges. He was frowning through the program tree at him.
Lithos was gasping for air, drowning in dread.
“Towel.”
He hid his face in it.
“I touched you,” Enzokuhle said, ruffled at the edges, “and you hear her.”
He shuddered, twice.
“Should I revoke permissions?”
Dark.
“We don’t want to lock everyone out of the system,” Lithos croaked.
“That’s not secure.”
This is dark. This is dark.
“We need access--” he said, hesitating while taking a few steps down the sidewalk.
Enzokuhle sighed and followed him. He clipped the tablet under his arm to unzip the pack on Lithos’ back.
“--to classified information that I have clearance for now.”
“Okay,” he said, clearly not comfortable. He hesitated, but handed him the tablet from his pack.
“When was the last teleport off HomeBase?”
The tablet blipped on, just a click between calls from the sirens.
Enzokuhle zipped his pack shut and fell in beside him. His focus was in the intricate file tree that was the entire organization. He then selected the teleportation department’s branches and pulled up their logs. He recoiled as he walked and coughed, “Just now.”
“Where?” he asked, pulling up the higher administration’s file tree.
“Hospital,” Enzokuhle had the Comms application open in the sidebar.
“Who?” he asked, the tablet lagging in its updates.
“Stavros,” Enzokuhle sighed, “and Alexander.” He was typing, “Please acknowledge receipt of this ALERT thread. PMMAA.”
‘You should be happy.’
Lithos whimpered, “Uh, what was the one--”
“Before them was Aaliyah,” Enzokuhle said. He was typing, “HomeBase, what’s your status? PMMAA.”
He sobbed at the updated status screen, “There’s one cruiser left operational.”
“One?”
“Yes.”
“Acknowledged,” he said as he typed it.
They both took counted breaths for several cycles in silence. His entire administrative view was painted red with errors and warnings. He’d expected it, given the shattered cityscape behind them, but there was only so much bracing one could do before getting bowled over by the sheer weight of raw data.
“Anyone reporting in?”
“No,” Enzokuhle said, his voice breaking.
“May not have time?” he offered.
“Mm,” Enzokuhle nodded.
Silver linings.
Pull yourself together, General.
Don’t write yourself off.
They’re depending on you.
“Tell them her eyes don’t turn red when Chi has her.”
“Okay,” and Enzokuhle did.
“The nicknames we’re speculating.”
“Affirmative.”
“The man in the hospital.”
“Yes,” Enzokuhle nodded, typing quickly, “right, white, left black?”
“Affirmative,” Lithos said.
“Garnets?”
“Mm, working on info.”
“Permission for access?” Enzokule asked.
“Granted.”
They continued down the avenue as skyscrapers crumbled behind them, sending shockwaves past them. They scrolled through what few documents there were, unphased by the rumble, affected entirely by the content of the Great Expanse Incident’s previously classified files.
“What?” Enzokuhle muttered, scrolling down to an image briefly before bouncing back up to reread what he was certain he’d misread.
They walked over gritting glass, watched the skyline, the holes in buildings they approached grow, and they read.
“Why was this stalled in admin research for so long?” Enzokuhle asked.
“You tell me,” Lithos scowled, still parsing through information he knew already.
“Are you okay?”
“I knew they were sitting on it,” he said, his blood boiling.
‘That’s something we all share, Theta--’
Two shivers, but they didn’t make him shudder. Her voice wasn’t as loud.
‘--boiling–’
“Well, you know how Baal--” Enzokuhle started.
‘--my blood is boiling,’ but he couldn’t hear how he ended over her.
Enzokuhle continued on, shaken, “Have you seen the garnets?”
“Uh, no,” Lithos muttered, shifting his eyes to his projection.
They were marquise-cut, glinting gemstones; exactly what they sounded like. It made absolutely no sense at all, given what they’d all been through. It wasn’t recognized as a known substance. There was hardly any information at all on how they operated. What was there was more or less unconcerned hypotheses.
“Did they even read the preliminary reports on it?” Enzokuhle asked. “First-hand reports?"
“Did they have clearance to?”
“I should hope so.”
“Through the Medical regulations?”
“Mm,” Enzokuhle grunted, smoldering. “PoSC-FPS.”
“No wonder it’s hung up in testing.”
His friend was staring furiously through the projection.
“Any responses?”
“Uh,” he droned, focused on the array of applications he had open, “yes. One confirmed.”
In the smoke between them, it read, “I’m trying. She’s everywhere. Push SmallPockets? -EW NomCom PMMAA.”
“Explain?” he asked, skipping back over to the field report of the Great Expanse Incident.
“More problems than its worth,” Enzokuhle said. He typed, “Negative. Do not push program.”
“Oh, right, that prototype messaging system you’ve shot down?”
“Mmhm.”
“Who was that again?”
“Eowyl.”
“Right, right.”
“We need zero interruptions to Comms.”
“What if he ran it in parallel?” Lithos said.
“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated, “if we should try to fix anything that isn’t too broken.”
“Alright, alright.”
The alarm siren message had not changed. The gravity of that was another weight around his belt.
Silver linings:
We’re all still alive
There’s a cruiser remaining, at least
The programming is working well enough
Redundancies are working
I got to hold her again
“How much longer on foot, do you think?”
He jolted, his ears burning, “To the Subterranean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m,” he shook his head, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea for me; for either of us.”
“They need Comms equipment,” Enzokuhle argued. “They need redundancies.”
“We likely wouldn’t make it there,” he said, in measured timbre, “without getting picked up by a transport lock.”
“Stay under the smoke cloud?”
“Would you map that for me? Does it work?”
“One moment,” Enzokuhle was shifting through the file tree again. From it, he pulled up the map of Aegea. He studied it a moment, then shifted his eyes between the map, their marker, and the smoke billowing above them.“Affirmative.”
He had paused in the field notes and shuddered. The document was updating before his eyes. Each word was erased after he’d managed to read what was there, replaced with an ‘X.’ “Where can I recover past versions of upper admin files?”
“Hm?” Enzokuhle glanced over, raised his eyebrows to process the next question. “It’s possible they’ve been erased.” His eyes lingered for a moment, watching the ‘X’s spread out through the page. Then, he snapped his attention back to his own projected screen.
‘I won’t,’ wasn’t her voice as much as it was an echo of it, ‘because you’ll stop me.’
“Alright,” he sighed.
‘And we won’t be having that.’
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