14. FOURTEEN #2
In a cave in the Sharinash wilderness. In the void. Where he’d been so disconnected he couldn’t even remember that, over the course of ten years, he’d been using his blood for alchemy to alter distortion cores.
Calver only rocked in response. The creature shifted somewhere in his mind’s deep. No. No no nonono.
“To be frank,” Niklaus started, “I was equally confused when you referred to me foremost as a writer.” Calver had only ever read his articles. He hadn't known. “Regardless, I hardly know anything about these”—he gestured at the plate—“things you seem quite adept at.”
Calver felt its gaze upon him. He quashed it. Void. His fingernails bit into his palms. He sucked in a slow breath.
Dex was looking at him like he’d sprouted a second head. “Why deconstruct it? Are you removing it from its circuit?”
What was a bleeding circuit? Calver gulped and tried to act like he hadn’t, in fact, nearly sprouted a second head. Feign control. They know nothing.
he asked Niklaus, who repeated the question to Dex.
“Yeah. Each plate shield is tied into a larger circuit, set to activate remotely.”
If the ground had slipped clean away from Calver, it wouldn’t have been a surprise for the way his stomach lost its floor.
“Meaning that, while the activator there might turn the shield on, there is a separate universal activator that connects the shields into one, giant, ahhh…” Niklaus searched the ceiling for whatever word he was looking for.
“Bubble. So that, were the recruitment to stand in a line, they would form a single barrier.”
Kretch.
He was in over his head.
He was an imposter.
Everything he’d done with distortion had been an act of intuition. He didn’t understand how Aetech used it any more than he understood how Ruxians spoke to trees. Whatever Fankalo had made as a replacement, it wasn’t that: a circuit with a remote activator.
Unless, of course, she’d found someone new to design them for her. Someone with an in at Aethertech Mechanics.
Someone like Roskaad Thyatira.
He slipped back into the spiral, familiar as the lines on his dry, cracked hands.
Niklaus and Dex began to bicker about something, but Calver could hardly focus on it.
How many times could he reasonably be surprised that Fankalo had chosen to act against his advice, knowing that her only lingering purpose for him was as a sacrificial weapon?
After what he’d done, he was lucky to even have that.
And now he was fraternizing with the lead investor for the company she was Chaos-bent on toppling. What were the chances? If there was one thing that could be said for the luckless Calverous Curtaim, be it said that things could not get any worse.
Dex gave Niklaus a look like he’d presented him with the wrong end of a curried spoon. “What could he possibly think is wrong with them? They’re perfectly secure.”
“Why so defensive? Why so sure?”
“My sister was the lead engineer on this project. And she doesn’t get things wrong.”
Wrong again. This was definitely worse.
Niklaus tapped his chin. “I finally understand why you hate me: Aetech dependence. Your sister… What’s her name?”
“Attilatia Mitar.”
Niklaus squinted at the boy. “Attilatia Mitar?”
“Yes, the foundation of your livelihood. Creation, if your brain ran half as fast as your mouth did.”
Niklaus stroked his chin, and appeared surprised to discover a beard had begun to form over it. “You can’t blame me for not making the connection sooner. She clearly took all the good genes.”
Dex’s slim face drew long. Then he flung a war cry, his loosened fists, and all his dignity at the gangly dishwasher, who held up a tray in a pitiful attempt to protect himself. Calver caught Dex in the gut mid-leap and strong-armed him into a headlock.
“Get. Off. Meee!”
Calver could just let them kill each other. It might be the easiest way to get out of this dilemma.
Dex thrashed against him. “It was bad enough that they set me up with you, Meyernes! Transgressor against everything she’s worked to build!” Calver tightened his hold. “Don’t trust him, Nameless! He’d do anything to topple Aetech, and he’ll con you into doing his bidding.”
On second thought, toppling Aetech did sound convenient.
Niklaus scoffed and leaned against the wagon’s frame, though he kept his tray at the ready. “Hardly my present focus.”
“Then why did you give a man on the restricted list—at the top of command's watch list—access to Aethertech Mechanics’ technology?”
Calver’s muscles clenched. Dex was Thyatira’s plant, after all. His arm was already locked around the boy’s neck. Tightening his grip would be simple. And he needed to be removed.
Didn’t he?
“It was a gamble, alright?” Niklaus admitted.
“For what? Another scheme that will allow you to capitalize on the insurance?”
“I needed resources so that I could ultimately tell the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That the General Prime is conspiring against Nelfindar’s sky society, and the Groundlings are his tool to do it.”
Calver’s grip slackened and Dex shouldered away from him, hands balled. “That’s a perversion of a national hero. He’s supporting Groundlings, not using them.”
Niklaus ignored him and gestured to Calver. “I wouldn’t be surprised if loud-mouth here is right and these plates are defective as a part of it.”
Niklaus was still an ally. An addict, perhaps, but in a desert of deaf soldiers, the man with one ear wore the crown.
Calver told him.
Niklaus blinked twice at Calver’s hands. “I—I’m what?”