Wayne wrote down his version first.
Naturally.
The man can turn getting arrested in a fake utility van into a technical report with a dramatic final line and still pretend he wasn’t showing off.
Then he wanted my side.
I told him his side had enough of me in it already.
He disagreed.
Quietly.
Which is worse than arguing, because Wayne goes quiet when he thinks the answer is obvious and is waiting for everybody else to catch up.
So I started writing this.
At first I left something out.
Not because it didn’t matter.
Because it mattered too much, and some things don’t belong to everybody just because they happened.
That was what I told myself.
Then I read it back.
It said people died.
It said the Cut.
It said old routes and cold rooms and names in files.
Everything except her.
Nice and clean.
Almost official.
So no.
Crownline already got to write her out once.
I’m not helping.
Her name was Kiva.
Now we can start.
I did not go to The Last Byte because I was scared.
That would be stupid.
I went because Wayne knew Crownline systems, and because the fragments I’d stolen were wrong in a way I could feel under my skin.
Schedules.
Routing headers.
Compliance language.
Bastion support listed as provisional.
Three Wires marked in clean blue lines like Crownline had any right to draw over it.
And names.
Too many names.
That was the part that made my hands itch.
Names meant records.
Records meant doors.
Doors meant boots.
Boots meant somebody official standing over somebody smaller and saying the paperwork was clear.
I brought Wayne the fragments on a busted tablet with two cracked corners and a battery that got warm if you looked at it disrespectfully.
He did not comment on that.
Suspicious.
Wayne always commented on equipment abuse when it wasn’t important.
He stood behind the counter at The Last Byte and read everything twice.
Maybe three times.
I remember telling him Crownline was calling it a safety sweep.
I remember listing Three Wires, old patch routes, families, and whatever bloodless phrase they had invented for people who kept fixing things after being told to freeze politely.
“Repeat infrastructure offenders,” probably.
Something like that.
That part stuck because it made me want to bite the tablet.
I showed him the Bastion line.
Provisional support.
Wayne said something quiet about how provisional never meant maybe with Crownline.
It meant the boots had already been cleaned.
I told him I knew.
Probably sharper than necessary.
He looked at the map again.
Three Wires.
Old patch routes.
Cut-era lines buried under newer names with nicer shoes.
I recognized some of them before I finished reading the labels.
Not because I was some kind of grid expert.
Kiva was the grid expert.
I was the idiot who could get the parts where they needed to go without falling off anything important.
Usually.
One of the branch marks looked like the kind of correction she used to make on my maps.
Straight line.
Hard angle.
No wasted motion.
Mine wandered because maps should have personality.
Kiva said maps should keep people alive.
She was always right about wires and unbearable about it.
Still is, apparently.
I told Wayne they were doing it again.
He asked when.
That was the whole conversation that mattered.
Not the exact words.
The shape.
I brought him proof that Crownline was winding the same trap again.
He believed me immediately.
Then he started deciding things without permission.
I should have asked what he had decided.
I didn’t.
That part matters later.
By the time I came back that night, the decision had become hardware.
The comm looked like trash.
Real trash.
Cheap stage trash.
Wayne explained what it did.
I remember almost none of that.
Beacon.
Shielding.
Bone vibration.
Some technical phrase that meant Crownline would take longer to notice me than usual.
I asked whether it exploded.
It did not.
Seemed like an oversight.
He said the important part was that he could hear me.
I said something about that being his punishment.
That sounds right.
He fitted the curved piece beneath my hair.
It buzzed against bone, small and strange and too delicate for the thing we were about to do.
He called it functional.
“Thrik.”
His fingers paused for half a second.
I asked how long it would last.
His answer was basically: not long enough, but stop asking.
Very comforting man.
By midnight, Crownline Service Hub 14 sat across the street looking expensive and smug.
I crouched beneath a maintenance stair and sized it up.
Bad roofline.
No loose fire escape.
Windows sealed.
Drainpipes too smooth to trust.
Cameras high enough to assume everybody worth catching was human-sized.
That part was useful.
The whole building gave me nothing.
No stacked crates.
No broken vent cover.
No deep shadow.
No clutter.
Even the pipes ran straight.
I hated the pipes personally.
Wayne started counting down to a service door.
I told him I could see it.
He told me I was looking at the wrong one.
There were several.
Apparently there was another one hiding low behind the conduit, because Crownline designs buildings under the assumption that nobody under four feet has criminal intent.
Useful mistake.
I asked whether he meant left.
He said low.
I told him that was where I was looking.
He disagreed.
That conversation may have contained more insults.
History has lost them.
Tragic.
The panel clicked.
Not open.
Not unlocked.
Just uncertain.
I liked uncertain doors.
They had potential.
I crossed beneath the first camera and got my fingers under the panel edge.
The comm buzzed against my skull.
Wayne told me to wait.
I froze.
A camera above the loading bay twitched.
Slow.
Wrong.
Its little red eye turned away from me and stared at an empty patch of wall.
Then Wayne gave me the little sound that meant move now.
I pulled.
The panel came loose with a soft metal complaint.
Finally.
Something in the building knew how to complain properly.
I slipped inside.
Crownline expected bodies to move like humans.
That was one of several reasons Crownline deserved what happened to it.
I went low.
Under.
Through.
I flattened myself into a maintenance crawl that smelled like hot dust, plastic, and something trying very hard not to admit it had overheated.
A bolt caught my sleeve.
I bit the fabric loose because my hands were busy and teeth are tools if you aren’t a coward about it.
Wayne told me not to damage the comm.
I told him I was damaging the building.
He reminded me it wasn’t his building.
I remember feeling that this improved the situation.
The crawl opened into a narrow space behind orange conduit.
The corridor beyond was empty and overlit.
Not bright.
Hostile.
There’s a difference.
I dropped to the floor.
My boots made almost no sound.
Almost.
I could be quiet when I wanted.
I rarely wanted.
That night, I wanted.
Wayne talked me through the corridors in pieces.
Left.
Down.
Wait.
Move.
Sometimes a sharp noise that meant I was about to step where a camera could see me.
Sometimes silence that meant he was doing something unpleasant to the building and I should stop trying to be helpful.
At one door, he told me the lock wasn’t as locked as it thought it was.
Or maybe I said that later.
Doesn’t matter.
It opened.
That was the relevant part.
Doors opened where they shouldn’t.
Cameras watched places I had already left.
An alarm announced unauthorized entry two corridors away and then politely changed its mind.
Somewhere above me, somebody started running in the wrong direction.
That was better.
Buildings should panic a little.
Keeps them humble.
Wayne kept guiding me.
Short words.
Sharp pauses.
He never said hurry.
That meant hurry.
The records wing was colder than the rest of the building.
The air hit the back of my throat and became another kind of cold for half a second.
Not machine cold.
Winter cold.
Metal rail under one hand.
Snow ground into the seams of my boots.
A bag of stolen connectors striking my hip while I ran.
Kiva coughing behind me and insisting she was fine.
She was always fine.
Right until she wasn’t.
I shut the memory down.
Wrong building.
Wrong year.
I got inside through a side service alcove, one wrist scraped, one knee wet, and one dagger in my hand because the room deserved to see it.
Rows of cabinets.
Black screens.
Locked drawers.
Everything square.
Everything labeled.
Everything placed where somebody taller expected it to be.
The terminals were built for human hands and human eye level, because information apparently became more official when I had to climb furniture to steal it.
I dragged over a chair.
It had wheels.
Bad choice, Crownline.
I found the sweep file in less than two minutes.
Then I found out it wasn’t one file.
It was a nest.
THREE WIRES COMPLIANCE SWEEP
EFFECTIVE: OCTOBER 24, 2024
ROUTE RETENTION REVIEW
PATCH HISTORY CROSS-INDEX
FAMILY-LINKED SERVICE IRREGULARITIES
REPEAT INFRASTRUCTURE OFFENDERS
I stared at that last one until the words stopped being words and became teeth.
There were names attached.
Old patch crews.
Helpers.
Runners.
People who climbed rooftops with wire and battery packs while Crownline told everybody the outage was being evaluated.
People who opened doors.
People who shared heat.
People who boiled soup on illegal coils and pretended nobody noticed how thin they were making it.
People who died.
Not in the file.
Nobody died in Crownline files.
They experienced complications.
They failed to respond.
They had vulnerabilities.
Very considerate of them.
I scrolled through the names.
I looked for Kiva.
There.
I said it.
I looked.
She hadn’t been patch crew.
Not officially.
She hadn’t been anything officially.
Ten years old.
Goblin.
No surname.
Bad lungs.
Better at reading a grid than most of the people who treated weakness like incompetence.
Crownline would have needed a box for that.
They liked boxes.
Dependent.
Unauthorized person.
Grid-offender associate.
Preexisting vulnerability.
Maybe nothing.
Nothing would have been easiest.
Her name wasn’t there.
That should have helped.
It did not.
For half a second, I was nine again.
Snow inside my boots.
Metal biting through gloves.
Kiva hunched over a route map, coughing into her sleeve and yelling because I’d marked a live branch as a shortcut.
I remember arguing that it was a shortcut.
She said it would burn.
I said only a little.
She looked at me like I had personally offended electricity.
That part I remember.
She had sharper handwriting than me.
Sharper everything, mostly.
I was faster.
That mattered right up until it didn’t.
Wayne asked where I was.
I told him I was busy.
He asked for an answer that contained information.
I told him I had the sweep schedule and was taking the route files too.
He told me to leave them.
I said no.
He said my name in the tone people use when they have mistaken concern for authority.
I said no again.
The second one was clearer.
The routes were the point.
A warning told people when Crownline was coming.
Routes told them which wire still carried heat after Crownline left.
Kiva would have known that.
Kiva did know that.
That was why her maps were better.
That was why people listened when she told them a line was overloaded, even if they also told her to sit down and stop coughing like she was trying to prove something.
I kept copying.
Wayne tried explaining that the building was recovering.
There were probably several technical words involved.
What I heard was:
The building is getting less stupid.
So I told him to make it stupid again.
He said he was trying.
I told him to try better.
Then the locks started clicking.
One behind me.
One across the hall.
A camera turned.
Not twitching anymore.
Looking.
Footsteps changed.
Before, people had been running around confused.
Now they were coming somewhere.
Here.
The building had stopped panicking.
It had noticed me.
I asked Wayne what was happening.
He told me to keep moving.
I asked again because that was not an answer.
He gave me something that sounded like an instruction and expected me to accept the distinction.
Then the line filled with static.
I said his name.
Maybe twice.
There was a pause.
Then:
“Wait for it.”
I remember that exactly.
Not because the words were special.
Because of the way he said them.
Like he had already stepped onto the other side of whatever was about to happen.
Then I heard a click.
Small.
Physical.
Final.
Not a keyboard.
Not a door.
A switch.
I knew switches.
Every goblin who grew up around bad wiring knew switches.
Good ones.
Bad ones.
Ones that saved your heat.
Ones that killed the lights.
Ones adults told you not to touch because they were lying and because you absolutely could touch them if you knew what they did.
Kiva always knew what they did.
I usually touched them anyway.
This one sounded like a decision.
Then Service Hub 14 went vrek.
The lights coughed.
The screens died.
Then woke up wrong.
A camera in the corner turned toward another camera.
That one turned too.
Then another.
Whole hallway full of little glass eyes staring at each other like they’d suddenly realized none of them trusted the others.
A nearby monitor filled with an old broadcast face.
Too many teeth.
Too much static.
Grinning like it had crawled out of a drain and found religion.
I laughed once.
Couldn’t help it.
Terrible timing.
Excellent face.
The alarms started fighting.
Fire event in progress.
Unauthorized access in progress.
Shelter in place.
Evacuate immediately.
Remain where you are.
Proceed to nearest marked exit.
Do not use marked exits.
I told the ceiling to pick one.
The ceiling declined.
Sprinklers hammered down somewhere deeper in the building.
Then closer.
Then everywhere.
Cold water hit my hair, shoulders, tablet, floor.
The lights flashed red and white.
The air filled with wet dust, hot wiring, and people realizing their expensive building had started lying to them.
Wayne had bought me a route.
Not time.
A route.
So I ran.
Through the door that had no business being open.
Under the camera busy accusing another camera of something.
Past a security officer who saw movement and aimed where a human chest would have been.
Human mistake.
Useful mistake.
Thrik mistake.
Bastion boots hammered behind me.
Expensive ones.
Terrible traction.
Good.
I slid under a half-closing barrier and felt it tear a chain loose from my belt.
Fine.
Let Crownline keep it.
Souvenir.
The tablet slipped.
I caught it against my ribs.
A voice shouted behind me.
Real voice.
Not automated.
Didn’t matter.
Boots sounded bigger when they thought size was destiny.
I cut into the south corridor.
After the building went vrek, Wayne mostly stopped sounding like words.
Fragments came through the static.
Movement.
Warnings.
A hard noise when I took the wrong corridor.
Maybe my name.
Maybe just interference shaped like it because I wanted it to be.
Then nothing.
My beacon died.
Or the comm died.
Or Wayne died.
No.
Bad thought.
Bite it.
I bit it.
For a few seconds there was only breath, boots, alarms, water, and the hard animal shape of get out get out get out.
Keep moving.
Baba always said luck favored moving feet.
Kiva said luck was what idiots called planning they hadn’t noticed.
They argued about that once.
I took Baba’s side because it annoyed Kiva.
Then Wayne’s voice came back.
Not cleanly.
Not Common.
Goblin.
“Nib... skrit.”
The word hit harder than the alarm.
I’d heard him speak Goblin before.
Once or twice.
Enough to know his sounded old around the edges.
Different from mine.
Different from Baba’s.
Different from Tangle street Goblin, all fast teeth and missing pieces because everybody already knew what you meant.
His came from somewhere else.
From Pops.
From before Adyta.
Low.
Rough.
Too much r.
Too much worry.
“Skrit. Ska.”
That part I remember exactly.
Some words stay words.
Some turn into scars.
Then the comm died for good.
And for one rotten second, I couldn’t move.
Not because I was scared.
Because I had heard that shape before.
Go.
Keep moving.
I’ve got this.
Run the parts.
Take the south route.
I’ll wait here.
Kiva had been supposed to wait inside.
She didn’t.
I had been supposed to come back.
I did.
Late.
That is not the same as not coming back.
People will tell you it is.
People enjoy absolution when it belongs to somebody else.
There was probably nothing I could have done.
That sentence has been following me for eight years asking to get stabbed.
The south exit opened ahead of me.
Rain beyond it.
Shadow.
Low Halo stink.
Real air.
Wayne had told me to run.
Kiva had told me to run.
Everybody was always telling me to keep moving and then acting surprised when I was the one still moving afterward.
I almost turned around.
Almost.
Then the tablet struck my ribs again.
The names were inside it.
The routes.
The schedule.
People who had seven days because I had made it this far.
People with weak lungs.
People with babies.
People with bad heaters.
People Crownline would describe very politely after they froze.
So I did the thing I hated most.
The useful thing.
I ran.
The exit opened like Wayne had ripped the lock out by its roots.
I hit the door with one shoulder and spilled into rain, shadow, and Low Halo stink.
My lungs grabbed the air hard.
Behind me, Service Hub 14 flashed red and white through the rain.
Water ran down the glass.
Alarms still argued inside.
Across the street, Bastion wasn’t looking at the exit.
They were looking at the van.
Wayne’s van.
For one impossible second, I stopped wanting to run.
My body kept going anyway.
Good body.
Smarter than feelings.
Less sentimental.
I ducked behind a service barrier and looked back through wet hair and neon glare.
Bastion vehicles turned in.
Men in armor hit the street.
Not toward me.
Toward him.
My hands tightened around the tablet until the cracked case creaked.
No.
No no no.
I got it in pieces.
The cameras.
The alarms.
The sprinklers.
The route.
The switch.
His stupid voice in Goblin.
The van.
Then the whole rotten thing clicked.
The van door tore open.
The alarms were too loud.
The rain was too loud.
My pulse was too loud.
But goblin hearing is good.
Wayne’s voice came faintly across the street.
Dry.
Almost amused.
Infuriating.
“What took you so long, boys?”
That line I remember exactly too.
He probably practiced it.
He will deny this.
He is lying.
That was when I understood.
Not everything.
Enough.
He didn’t get caught stupid.
He stayed.
The thought hit so hard I nearly stood up.
Nearly crossed the street.
Nearly did something loud and useless and satisfying.
The last time I kept moving while someone else stayed behind, I came home with an empty bag and Baba waiting for me.
She had the face.
The one where the world ended and nobody had bothered to tell the room.
Hate that face.
I knew before she spoke.
Baba said Kiva’s name plainly.
No soft voice.
No lie.
No “passed.”
No “lost her.”
Kiva died.
The cold got into her lungs and there wasn’t enough heat and there wasn’t enough medicine and there wasn’t enough time.
I didn’t cry.
I was too tired.
The grief was too big and I was too small and neither one cared that goblins called me an adult.
So I stood there.
Still.
I have been moving ever since.
Across the street, Bastion dragged Wayne out of the van.
The tablet was against my ribs.
Kiva’s name was not inside it.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t.
Every route in that file led back to her.
Every family Crownline had marked.
Every patched wire they called an irregularity.
Every person whose survival offended them.
Three Wires had seven days because Wayne had bought them seven days with his own body sitting in a stupid fake utility van across from Service Hub 14.
And that was Wayne all over, wasn’t it?
Not clean.
Not noble in any way he would admit to.
Not fair, either.
He had made the choice before telling me the price.
Infuriating man.
Useful man.
Flawed man doing the best wrong thing available.
I wanted to go back.
I want that understood.
Not in a heroic way.
Not because I had a plan.
I wanted to go back because leaving felt like becoming nine again.
Because my body remembered snow.
Because sometimes the past doesn’t repeat.
Sometimes it grabs you by the throat and asks whether you learned anything.
I could have crossed the street.
Maybe I would have reached him.
Maybe Bastion would have taken both of us.
Maybe the tablet would have broken.
Maybe Crownline would have found the copied records.
Maybe Three Wires would have woken up on October twenty-fourth to white-and-gold vans and polite notices and people with weak lungs being told the interruption was temporary.
Maybe Wayne would have looked at me like I was an idiot.
Actually, that part was certain.
So I left him.
Again.
No.
Not again.
That word belongs to Crownline.
They do things again because they never learn.
I left Wayne because he had made sure leaving was the only useful thing left for me to do.
There is a difference.
I know there is.
I hate it anyway.
I ran into Low Halo with the records under one arm, rain in my eyes, and Wayne’s Goblin burning in my ear after the comm had gone dead.
By morning, somebody had a version.
By noon, Low Halo had six.
By the end of the week, someone had painted the line on a wall.
WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, BOYS?
People laughed when they said it because laughing is easier than counting what Crownline almost did.
They made Wayne bigger or stupider or meaner depending on what the story needed.
They turned Bastion into idiots.
Crownline into cowards.
The van into a bomb, a shrine, a dragon, and once, for reasons nobody adequately explained, a toaster with opinions.
Low Halo loves a bastard with a good exit line.
Wayne survived.
I should probably mention that before somebody gets dramatic.
They arrested him.
Questioned him.
Broke several expensive things and at least one thing he claimed was irreplaceable, although Wayne says that about objects the way other people say it about family.
He came back meaner.
So, basically fine.
Three Wires got the warning.
The routes changed.
Old lines disappeared.
New ones appeared where Crownline wasn’t looking.
Families moved equipment.
Patch crews split their records.
Names stopped matching addresses.
By October twenty-fourth, Crownline arrived with Bastion support, compliance documents, and a beautiful clean map of a place that no longer existed.
They called the operation inconclusive.
They called the delays regrettable.
They called the community response uncooperative.
Nobody froze.
Nobody died.
Crownline did not call that a victory.
We did.
Wayne never asked why I took the route files after he told me not to.
Or maybe he asked once and I told him to mind his business.
Either version sounds like us.
He knew the routes mattered.
He knew the Cut mattered.
He knew Crownline shut off the heat.
He knew people died.
He knew The Tangle rebuilt itself so it could never happen the same way twice.
He did not know why I had looked through Crownline’s list for one name that had no reason to be there.
He did not know about Kiva.
Not then.
Most people didn’t.
The first time I told the story, I left her out.
I called her one of the dead.
I called her someone coughing.
I called her a route marker and a dark window and everything except what she was.
Kiva.
My friend.
My rival.
The smartest person in the room and the most irritating about it.
The goblin who wanted to make The Tangle impossible to shut off.
The goblin who did not get to see it happen.
I thought keeping her name out kept something safe.
Maybe it did.
It also made the story cleaner.
Made her smaller.
Turned her into one more unnamed person Crownline could file under complications.
No.
They don’t get that.
I don’t get to do that for them.
Her name was Kiva.
She was here.
She mattered.
Put that in the record.
