Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Scar
Two humans have arrived with full access to the system someone used to nearly kill my brother, and I’m supposed to what…not watch them?
Impossible.
It would be negligent not to keep my eyes on them. A failure of the exact job I gave myself years ago and have not set down since.
They’ve been on Timbur for four diurnals now and I find reasons to be on whatever level they’re on, which is not surveillance so much as diligence.
Minecorp Security considers these two humans vetted because they are attuned and have a Chronos Classified Clearance.
This means nothing to me. I’ll consider them both moles and spies until I learn otherwise.
I look down the hallway, at the two of them, both working on a panel.
Their grid audit takes them all over the mine, panel to panel, node to node, following the network down through the levels similar to how I follow a fracture through rock. Wherever they open a new panel, I’ve managed to come up with a reason to remain nearby.
Today, they’re on level four hundred, at the junction where the old grid ties into the new.
It’s one of the old worked-out levels, the crystals long since mined and the remaining left to regenerate.
The rock walls are smooth here, rounded by generations of hands, and the air is cooler than the deep shafts.
It’s drier, with the faint mineral hum that empty Illibrium chambers always carry.
New crystal-light runs in a thin vein along the ceiling, throwing everything in that low steady blue.
Cable and conduit snake down the walls where the grid was routed through decades ago, patched and re-patched, the new network grafted onto the old like new bone set against a break that never fully healed. It’s a good level to hide a fault in.
I’m here to do a survey on regeneration I don’t strictly need to accomplish.
The human male talks more than he works.
He speaks easily to anyone. Two members of a crew working on the other end of this level have drifted over to watch the humans.
Andrew Wilson has the two Xylan laughing about something…
some joke I can’t hear. I’ve watched three separate miners stop to trade words with him in the last four diurnals, and every one of them walked away smiling.
I shrug, this tells me nothing. Easy to like is not the same as trustworthy, and I have known charming males who’d sell their own crew for the right weight of currency.
But there’s nothing in him that pings, so my eye slides off the human because he isn’t a threat.
The female is the one I watch more intently.
Mara Wilson is the technical lead. She’s the one with both hands in the panel while he holds the light and runs his mouth. If either of them matters to my case, it’s her.
Mara is small, even for a human. The top of her head wouldn’t reach my chest. She’s a colorless human, with a scatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
Her hair is brown, pulled back off her face and already coming loose at the edges from the work, a few strands stuck to her temple where she’s sweated through the cool air.
She’s got a smudge of grid-dust along one jaw.
Her hands, in the green gloves of the unmated, are sure, quick and never idle.
And her eyes, when she glances up from the panel to check a reading, are a bright, clear blue, sharp with the specific focus of a being who is fully inside a problem and enjoying working through the task.
I put my hand flat over my pocket, because I’ve noticed that lately my personal crystal remains brighter than normal.
I’m still pretending to read the survey when she wipes the dust from her gloves, hands the light back to her brother, and strides down the hallway to me. I don’t expect this. Beings do not cross caverns in order to speak to me, not if they can help it.
She walks straight up and meets my gaze. Her bright blue eyes do not drift down to the ruin of my cheek and back up again. There’s no flinch. No flash of pity, which is worse than fear and far more common.
Instead, Mara looks at me, level, like my face is a face. “You’re Scar, of the Fever Brothers crew. Right?”
Her voice is even and surprisingly pleasant, and I have the sudden, unwelcome, entirely useless thought that I could listen to it for a long time and not tire of a single word.
“Yes.”
“My name is Mara Wilson. I’ve asked for a record of the history of this grid and learned that you keep the old grid surveys. The pre-upgrade schematics. Everything from before the last network overhaul.”
“Yes. They were going to be deleted after the upgrade, but I kept everything.”
Something in her sharpens with interest. “Good. I’m happy you did that, it will make things easier for me. When you say you kept everything, what exactly do you mean? Do you have the physical schematics, or the load histories too? The failure logs?”
“All of it. Load histories going back to the first shaft. Every failure logged since the outpost was established. The current records are on the Minecorp system. The old ones are on my system.”
“On yours.” She tilts her head. “Not the company’s?”
“No.”
She takes that in without asking why. “Good. Because I need them, and I have a feeling the useful half is in those histories.” She glances back over her shoulder at the open junction, then to me again.
“The failure’s not in the current network.
That’s the thing nobody wants to hear, because they paid a fortune to have it installed, but the current network’s too clean.
It’s the newest thing in this entire mine and it works exactly the way it should.
Whatever’s wrong is older than the last upgrade.
It’s underneath that and nobody’s looked there, because that means going through old schematics, half of which everyone thinks are missing.
But…” She grins. “It turns out you actually have them.”
I gaze at her impassively, while processing the fact that I have thought that exact thing for two moon cycles. I have said this out loud to precisely one being, and she is home in the compound with a newborn asleep on her chest. “I’ll pull them,” I say.
“Thank you.” She half-turns to go, already done with me, ready to go back inside the grid, and then she stops. Turns back. Considers me with those sharp blue eyes for a moment. “Can I ask you something?”
I say nothing, which she’s apparently learned already to read as yes.
“You’ve been on every level we’ve worked for the last four diurnals,” she continues. “Level four hundred today. Twelve hundred yesterday. The processing floor before that. Every time I look up from a panel, you’re somewhere at the edge of the room with a survey you never seem to actually read.”
I continue to gaze at her, not responding.
“You do not seem menacing, but instead…watchful? Your presence has not bothered me or interfered in my work. On my first day, Security walked me through the whole operation and when we passed you once in a hallway they lowered their voices and told me to stay away from you.” She holds my gaze. “Why did they say that?”
She’s not afraid of me?
I shrug. “They tell everyone to stay away from me. It saves time.”
A smile twitches at the corners of her perfect lips. “That’s not an answer, but it’s a good line. I’ll allow it.” She nods once, like we’ve closed a deal I didn’t know we were making. “Bring me the surveys, Scar. Load histories included. I think you and I are looking at the same thing.”
You and I. I have been the only one looking at this for so long the words don’t fit in my brain. “Tomorrow,” I confirm.
“Tomorrow.” And this time she does go back, hips swaying, across the hallway to her open panel and her waiting brother.
My personal crystal glows that unusual color again, faint and steady, the one I still don’t have a name for. I try very hard not to notice.