Niah

The halls and stairwell leading up to the lab seem almost deserted now. I wonder what time it must be on the surface. The City Below is a strange mix of dark rock and shimmering metals. It's as if time forgot this place. There is an odd blend of fibreglass and metal, like on the Elixr, mixed with ancient catacombs of the stone and medieval ages. Smoking torches are staggered at intervals along the walls in more established areas.

We wind through several corridors and then up two flights of stairs before reaching what the others called the lab. After the eclectic clutter of the City Below, I'm startled by the modern tech inside.

"Lyris," Tannan says, greeting the tall dark-haired woman that stands with her back to us. "How you doing, Boss?"

She turns, her face wreathed in a smile. It's clear she's in her element here, surrounded by a scatter of tech and completely at home amongst it.

As she steps toward us, I gasp. Hart sits in a jumble of pieces behind her. His face screen is dormant and black. His head is precariously propped so that the wires connecting it to his torso are supported without the column rods that construct his neck. His torso is deconstructed and his interior is spread across the table. His hover thrusters are in parts.

"What have you done!" I cry, rushing forward. I pick up several of the pieces in turn and bite my lip. A clench of tension hits my gut and the breath bursts from my lungs.

"Is it yours?" Lyris asks. "It's magnificent, truly. I haven't seen tech in such good condition outside of the Inner Circle. I mean, it's not perfect, of course. It does show significant signs of age, but since the ban two hundred narcycles ago, the only technology that hasn't fallen to rust and murk is the tech that keeps the City of Light functioning. That's all owned by the Lord so I can never get my hands on it. But this, it's a masterwork of construction. It must have been state-of-the-art in its circuit."

Her rambling voice does little to sooth my nerves. "You've got to put him back together. What were you thinking? We need him!"

Tannan looks down at the jumble of parts. "Chortessa's guts, Lyris. Can you get the darn thing working again?"

"Oh, I, well, I've been fixing him. There's a degree of damage, partly from the fall but, well he's quite aged too, so some of his internals need replacing. I sent Blake and Jenin out to get what I need but it might take several factors at the least before I can have him fully functional."

"But he was working before! He was talking. Can't you at least wake him up?"

"Well, sort of."

Tannan raises an eyebrow. "Sort of? I was counting on the droid tech being able to hack us into the city."

"Well, his primary processor is offline but he has a partial memory backup on this interface, so there are aspects of his program that will run independently from the main unit." Lyris picks up a panel of plating with a screen that reminds me of the tablets Wish and I used on Elixr.

Tye comes forward. He looks down at the tablet, lifting it from Lyris's hands. "This thing is the robot?"

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She blinks. "Yes, I suppose so, at least in part. It plays the role of an interface in the short term and contains the base of his coding." She turns to Tannan. "With someone who knows how to program, it can be used as a means to bypass some of the security in the Inner Circle and probably the Palace."

"Will it get them into Virreal?"

She raises an eyebrow. "You're going to Virreal? Wow, I knew you were brave, Tye." She shakes her head. "The things you do for those in need. I don't know if the Faithful can ever thank you for all you've done for us." She sighs, then turns back to Hart's tablet. "Obviously, the interface itself can't be a direct link; you'll need to access a unit, but if you jack the interface in, it can be used to bypass certain security aspects; again, only if you know how to write the program."

Tannan frowns. "Do you–" Lyris is shaking her head before he can even ask.

"Sorry, but no. I'm good with the mechanics but the interior is beyond my wheelhouse. I haven't had an opportunity to learn the inner workings. Never allowed close enough to the Inner Circle to interact with an interface like this." She grins. "Actually, that's why I was so excited to get my hands on him." She takes the console off Tye again and begins flicking through settings and operating commands in the user interface. "I was looking forward to exploring."

I shudder at the idea and hold my hand out for the tablet. "Please don't mess with it. I need him to be Hart when you bring him back online." Lyris sighs and hands the console to me. I browse through the settings and sigh with relief to find the system is both fully functional and unrestricted. Even the code has hints of the strange way Hart talks. The text on the screen is like a familiar friend. Hart is still in here. We can get him back.

"Can you work it?" Tye asks. I nod.

"Yes." I reach over and dig through some of the debris of Hart's parts on the table until I pull free a cable. "I don't know if this will link with your systems. It's the same cable hook-up we use on Elixr."

Lyris checks the ends of the cord. "The City of Light was constructed from the same technologies as your starship so it's possible those mechanics will work." She reaches behind her and digs through a tray of parts on another desk. After a short rustle, she pulls out some other parts. "But if you run into any problems, try these." She takes the wires, and a wire stripper, strips the ends of each of the cords. I gasp and she smiles. Then she connects additional port sockets and creates an adaptable connection to the end of the cord in a matter of deccas.

I raise an eyebrow. "Adaptors?"

She nods. "Yes. See, now you can plug and unplug each connection so if you run into troubles with the ports, you can switch out for the kind you need. The Virreal unit in particular is more likely to use this one rather than that. It's newer tech, post-Shadow."

I nod, only understanding half of what she is saying but understanding enough that I'm sure I'll be able to use the device effectively.

Tannan taps the table. "What about the creds you were going to secure? For the Inner Circle?"

"Right," Lyris says, she turns to a console against one wall of the lab and pulls up a schematic. "This pass will get you past the Outer Circle no problem, but you'll need better creds to access some parts of the Inner Circle and the Palace itself." A loud buzz whirrs around us as the machine prints. I watch as a couple of small chip cards with holo-IDs on them materialise. It's a lot like the fabricator on the Elixr but seems to be more manual based, drawing from a tray of glass rather than a fabrication drive for raw components.

"Just two?" Tye asks.

"That's all I could source codes for. I mean I could print duplicates but the odds of it triggering an alert increase significantly. How many did you need?"

Tannan shakes his head. "Two will have to do." I feel suddenly nervous, knowing that Tye and I will have to go into the city alone. I swallow and bite my lip.

Tye takes both creds from Lyris and hands one to me. It's still warm from the printing process. I glance down at it, surprised to see my likeness. It's not me of course, it's Bellamy, and I remember then that part of this depends on me entering the city with a face that isn't really mine.

Tye glances back at Hart's array of parts. "When we get back with the girl–"

"Wish."

He nods. "Yes, when we get back with Wish, we'll need him functional." Tye turns to me. "You need him to make the cure work, right?"

I dip my chin. It's not strictly true, at least I don't think so. But if Lyris can fix his memory systems I'll know more. "I need him," I say, choosing not to state a full truth but instead, a half one.

Tye smiles and it's reassuring to know he's on my side. He turns to Lyris. "She needs him functional by the time we get back."

Lyris grins and offers him a mock salute. "No problem. Blake and Jenin will be back with parts soon and he's all I'll work on until he's fully restored."

Tannan nods. "That's good to hear."

Tye turns to me. "Looks like we're headed up to the city." His eyes sparkle with excitement for the adventure ahead and he grins. "You ain't seen nothing yet," he says with a wink.