City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (30 page)

“Maybe not for you,” Iris said.

“I can hack this,” Spark said, looking up. “I can make it tell security we’re allowed…well, wherever we want to be allowed. Does that change things?”

“Are you sure?” It sounded too good to be true and we’d have no margin for error.

Spark grinned, like my question was silly. “Of course. There’s nothing in this circuitry I haven’t seen.” Her smile grew. “There’s nothing here my people didn’t discover first.”

Iris laughed. “It’s no wonder they don’t like you much. Do you Fyeans make a habit of breaking into Jansynian security?”

“Why would we? It’s not like they’re ever doing anything interesting.” Serious again, Spark looked back at me. “Does this help?”

I thought of Seana’s office, all the screens on the wall. “We’d still have cameras to deal with—”

“Cameras are not a problem,” Syed said with finality.

“And the fact no one who sees us is going to believe we belong there.”

“I can look like I belong there,” Iris pointed out. “If I take point, I can try to steer us around witnesses.”

“And if we cannot evade them, we can surprise them,” Vogg said, laying a hand meaningfully on the hilt of his sword.

Call me crazy, but this was starting to sound possible. “Spark, how long will it take you to hack the security disc?”

“Hard to say.” Her attention was back on the tiny badge, focused through her eyepiece. “Vogg, could you get my bag? I need my NetPad and my tools.”

Iris stood. “While she’s working on that, Ash, you and I need to deal with the reservoir.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Her color was back to normal, and she flashed a sharp, dangerous smile. “We’re going to do the last thing they’d think of. We’re going to tell the truth.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Right Trigger at the Right Time

The one advantage we had was the shadows’ need for secrecy. They had Amelia, but she couldn’t revoke Iris’s and my security access without raising questions. When Spark asked if they might accuse us of being the ones possessed, Syed was confident with his no. “No one knows about us, and even as insane as those three have become, they will not break that most fundamental secret. They aren’t capable of it.”

I had to hope he was right. Our plan hinged on it.

Miroc sloped up on this side of the city as it reached out into the dry foothills that formed the bottom tips of a mountain range that spread halfway up the world. It meant the towering wall of the reservoir dam stood almost as high as the Crescent itself. All the lights were on, a blazing cloud of white that washed out the sky and made the arching metal roof seem to glow.

A restless crowd filled the streets and parking lots outside the two-story security fence that surrounded the reservoir. I’d never been here in person. Even when rain was a regular thing, the main water supply for our city in the desert was kept under heavy guard. No one was allowed in unless they had business.

Even so, I’d seen pictures, videos, news stories. What I’d never seen before were armed men standing atop the wall, weapons in hand. None of them were pointed at the crowd—not yet—but the situation was not stable.
 

Iris and I had been forced to walk here. The tubes were still shut down from the…disruption earlier. I’d left my Jansynian bike back at the safehouse, and it was too easy to imagine any number of terrible outcomes were we to go back and get it. Besides, I’d left my security disc with Spark, so the bike probably wouldn’t work.

Approaching on foot meant Iris and I got to experience the sheer scope of the restless sea of people. Mostly human, which was to be expected, but I saw an alarming number of giants—tall enough to reach up and grab the security people on the walls—and even a few lizards. If nothing else convinced me how dire the city’s situation had become, it was lizards on the side of rebellion.

Even in these early morning hours, no one was asleep. Everyone was yelling. Demanding help. Demanding water. Demanding a salvation that was in no one’s power to grant. The guards on the wall looked grim. Armed or not, there weren’t enough of them to keep back this crowd if things turned ugly.

Iris and I pushed through, earning hostile looks and the occasional rough shove. I apologized where I could, but I kept moving.
 

A barrier had been set up in front of the gate that led into the reservoir. A team of five men, rifles in hand, stood guard around it, keeping the crowd back. All five looked as edgy and restless as the people they guarded against. None of this was good.

As we reached the front of the crowd, Iris’s face smoothed and shifted to one I’d seen her wear a few times around the office—any repeats with Iris were notable.

And not just to me. “Iris,” one of the guards said, relief obvious in his voice. “Thank the gods. We’ve been calling for hours for Ms. Price to send more support.”

Iris twitched her head at the people spread out behind us. “What’s the situation?”

“They’re restless. They’ve been restless. They want the government to release more water. We haven’t gotten any more threats from the terrorists, but if there’s an attack, these people are going to be stuck in the middle of it. A bomb like the one they set off at the university—they wouldn’t even have to get it into the reservoir proper. Just set it off in the middle of this crowd…”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence. “Molly Chambers still on duty?” Iris asked. “I need to talk to her.”

The guard nodded. “She’s in the security office inside.” He waved his hand around three times in the air, and the gate behind him opened. “Go on through.”

While Iris talked, I had watched the guards carefully for any sign of possession. Assuming the shadows in Seana and Amelia would stay put, we still had one shadow unaccounted for. But if it had infiltrated one of these guards, it was well hidden. “How well do you know Molly?” I asked Iris softly as we passed through the gate.

“Well enough to trust her to be smart and sensible. As long as she hasn’t been—as long as one of them hasn’t taken her.”

“She’s the logical target if they want things here to fall apart.”

We’d discussed possible attack routes on the way over. Rational ideas like poison in the water or blowing up the dam. Crazier ideas like underground drilling to drain the reservoir or a full Jansynian military strike. The conclusion we’d reached was that unless Molly herself was compromised, we could hold things stable for the time we needed to break into the Crescent. If the security team was on the lookout for a lone saboteur, our one missing shadow would have a hard time getting around it. Molly and the rest of Amelia’s people were too smart for Amelia to be able to give them new instructions that would leave a gaping hole in the security. And even Seana didn’t have the sole authority to direct a full-scale military attack on the city’s water supply.

I hoped.

The one person we needed, though, was Molly. If the missing shadow had her already, we were in trouble. “Has anyone from the city asked to see Ms. Chambers since yesterday?” I asked our escort.

“Nah, we’ve been locked down pretty tight.”

“Have there been any deaths?” Iris asked. Probably a better question.

If the guard thought our questions odd, he didn’t show it. “Nope. Other than the crowd outside, it’s been quiet.”

The riot waiting to happen. “How long have they been there?”
 

“Been growing for days. There’ve been some scuffles, and I expect we’ll see more. I saw the threats the city council got. Molly showed ’em around. We’re buttoned up pretty tight. I don’t think the terrorists can get through us, but they can sure cause a panic and if that happens, lots of people are going to die.”

The main security office was at the base of the dam, a solid-looking concrete square with bars over the windows and a reinforced metal door. Our escort stopped at the door and looked up, into the small camera that pointed down at us. A moment later, the door clicked and swung open.

We walked into a dustier version of Seana’s office up in the Crescent. The city had put a lot of money into this place. A wall of screens showed every imaginable location, from the front gate to the maintenance hallways to the walkway at the top of the dam. At the desk, a woman I’d seen in passing back when I’d been moving through P&B in a daze, but had never stopped to talk to.
 

“Molly,” Iris said.

Molly nodded back. “About time. I know it’s the middle of the night and all, but Amelia stuck us here and it would be nice if she’d take our calls. I need more men. We’ve got the front gate protected well enough, but if this crowd takes it in their head to circle around into the hills, I’m not equipped to fight a war on two fronts.”

“I’m afraid it gets more complicated.” Iris grabbed for herself the only other chair in the room. “Ash and I need to talk to you alone.”

“Just call me if you need anything else,” our escort said, and left, closing the door behind him.

“This situation’s going to hell,” Molly said once we three were alone.

“More than you know.” Iris closed her eyes briefly, but that was the only sign she gave of just how upset she still was. “P&B’s been compromised. I can’t be any more specific, but I’m going to tell you to disregard any orders you receive that don’t come from me or from Amelia
in person.
Don’t trust any electronic communications—not even if you get a call from someone who sounds like Amelia. It isn’t her on the other end. The real Amelia will bring you instructions in person if she needs to rearrange the security from what I’m about to tell you.”

Molly nodded, attentive. While she was focused on Iris, I took the opportunity to study her as deep as I could. If a shadow was inside her and left any trace of itself visible, I would see.

Pointing at the screens as she talked, Iris explained the changes she wanted, the new patrol patterns, the new schedules. The fact no employee, no matter how trusted, was to be left alone. “There’s magic at work here. It’s nothing we’ve seen before, but in short, any single person can be compromised. Anyone. Even Amelia or me—don’t trust either of us unless we’re accompanied by at least one other person from P&B.” This was our ace in the hole. Shadow-Amelia might travel down here herself—it wasn’t like they had to worry about her safety—but she wouldn’t know we’d given Molly these instructions. “If you see any of us alone, we are to be put under guard—multiple guards—and you are to hold us no matter what we say.”

Another of the many signs I’d ignored while I was sleepwalking through my life—signs that P&B was more than the simple investigation firm we advertised—Molly nodded, accepting Iris’s instructions without question.
 

Or maybe she didn’t have to question because the shadow inside her already knew exactly what was going on.

But hopefully, with these new instructions, even if Molly herself was compromised, this would slow the shadows down. Certainly Iris and I had no plans to go anywhere until we’d seen these new instructions put into action.
 

Molly tapped a button on her earpiece and started talking through the new orders. On the wall, I was able to watch the men and women of her security teams rearrange into the new patterns with reassuring efficiency. As I scanned across the screens, activity at the front gate caught my eye. “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the tall, long-haired man who had drawn the crowd in around himself as he was speaking.

Molly tapped her earpiece again, so she was talking just to us. “One of the lead protesters. There’s about half a dozen of them who periodically get up and give little speeches. Keep the people nice and angry.” She rolled her eyes. “’Cause sleep deprivation is everyone’s best friend.”

It was like a new game—what would happen if
this
person was the missing shadow? “It looks like he’s trying to get the mob riled up.”

“They do that.” She sighed and turned her headset back on. “HQ to gate—anything going on out there we should know about?”

She listened, head tilted, then said, “Thanks. Keep me posted.” She tapped off her mic. “Like I said, nothing we haven’t heard before.”

Iris, too, was watching the man. “How
riled
has the crowd gotten so far? What happens if they try to storm the gates?”

“Then they’re running straight into a line of automatic rifles. We’re fortified and well-supplied. They’re unarmed civilians. They’d have to be suicidal to try it, and I think we’d discourage them pretty fast.”

Mob mentality. These people were desperate, scared, and they knew they were running out of time. The right trigger at the right time—“We need to get out there,” I said to Iris.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

The people on the screen were shouting, cheering, yelling. We had no sound, only the images of mouths moving and fists pumping into the air. And the tall man in the center, shouting with them, pointing at the gate.

“Oh no no no,” Molly said, leaning forward. “Gate, what’s happening?”

I couldn’t hear their response, but I saw guns being raised towards the crowd. “Shit,” Molly hissed. “He can’t be—” She turned back at us. “He’s yelling about sacrifice, death for the greater good, crazy nonsense. He’s going to march them right into our guns.”

“And if he falls, someone else will take up where he left off.” Exhaustion filled Iris’s voice. “And another after that. Until they’ve killed—”

I couldn’t bear the thought. “Tell them not to shoot.”

“I can’t do that,” Molly said.
 

Of course. Why would she listen to me? “Iris,” I pleaded.

“Ash, we can’t—”

“We can’t stand here and watch these people die.”

“Without this water, the whole city dies!”

“The city’s dying! The city has one chance, and only once chance, and you and I both know what that is. If we minimize short-term bloodshed by letting these people get in here and just take the water they need—”

The distinct sound of an automatic pistol being cocked interrupted me. Molly had a weapon in her hand. It wasn’t pointed at me, not yet, but her expression was wary. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I was given my instructions by Amelia Price, and her orders came from the city council. We’re defending this water. That’s the end of it.”