The trip back to the vent maintenance room was without event. He lay on the cold metal floor and stared up at the ceiling, praying that his current circumstances wouldn't last much longer. Roger was right. If he stayed hidden much longer his low scores would be sure to send him to the box, even if the others were able to reset the A.I. Then again, scores were the least of his problems.

Victor began to hum to himself. It was an Auroran tune, one that his mother would sing to him when he was a small child. Things had been different, then. Life hadn't seemed so bad. After his mother passed everything changed. His father changed. His brother changed. The entire world and his place in it began to shift. There was no longer any such thing as safety.

After a period of sleep Victor woke to scuffling noises in the vents. He wasn't sure of whether it was 'day' or 'night' according to station time.

"Victor? Are you there?" It was Fumio's voice.

"I'm here, Fumio," Victor said, getting up. Victor was glad to hear the sound of someone else's voice. He hadn't been in the the vents long, but it was already taking its toll.

Fumio crawled through the remainder of the vent and stood in the maintenance room. He was smiling.

"Good news. It looks like you'll be able to leave the vents, soon. Our meeting was a success."

"And Najar?" Victor asked, anxiously.

"We were able to get the information to your friend."

Victor relaxed. "Great. How exactly do you intend to get me out of here?"

Fumio took a deep breath. It was clear that it was a long story.

"We went comm diving into the surface level of the A.I. mind file. Dipping our toes in the water, so to speak. We kept finding these weird sections of code that were basically useless. They were sections written in high level code that were nothing but an opening bracket, a closed bracket, and empty space between them."

Victor nodded. He was familiar with coding, but no expert in any computer language.

"We've found that we can insert code within these brackets of our choosing, but it only effects certain things depending on where we insert the code."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the drones for example. This was the easiest section to find. Deleting T.J.'s code was laughable, though we haven't quite agreed on what code to put in its stead."

"So I can leave now?" Victor let his excitement show, but Fumio raised a hand.

"Not quite. It looks like the A.I. compiles and posts these updates to the system once a day only. That's our guess, anyway. When that happens Roger will almost certainly disappear. No drone escorts and a lot of angry students means that he'll almost certainly be thrown out of the airlock at the first opportunity. We have to wait until he stops showing his face."

Victor nodded, now trying to hide his disappointment. Fumio patted him on the shoulder.

"Hang in there. We're making progress," he said.

Fumio had managed to sneak Victor some stale cereal before leaving. Victor ate every last drop, appreciating the fact that the others were spending their precious meal points on him. The meal wasn't exactly delicious, but it was filling. After he finished he decided to try another expedition into the ventilation system.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

This time he started on the side headed away from the mess hall. There was a greater chance of getting lost, but Victor decided it wouldn't be a problem if he didn't go that far. He traced the vents to the classroom area at the center of the ship. From his spot at the side of the room he looked at the sitting class with envy. The soft voice of the computer droned on as students scribbled for their lives. Victor couldn't decide if he was impressed or worried that so many students seemed to still be focusing on their Mental scores despite the situation on Nexus. In one of the arena seats he spotted Roger, sitting with his arms folded. It looked like he hadn't gotten a full nights rest in days. Every nebula had a silver lining, Victor supposed. Though he didn't think they actually did in reality.

Taking lecture with the A.I. was bad enough in class. Taking it from a vent was something that Victor was completely uninterested in. It was time to move on. The vent shaft went down a ways, past the classroom partition. Something incredibly exciting occurred to Victor. Would it be possible to get to the other side of the station from the vents? Had it been so simple this entire time?

He crawled forward, trying not to make any sounds that a person in the classroom could hear. He froze suddenly. It was a moment before he realized why. His instincts had saved him. He had heard the hum of a laser grid and stopped just short of it. He could see the lines going from top to bottom in the vent shaft. Physically going to the other side was still not an option.

Still, the grid shouldn't stop sound, unlike the holo-partition in the classroom/arena . Victor was still on all fours and listened. He'd almost given up when he began to hear sounds on the other side. Voices.

"...right, Storm.....have all the fun...."

He couldn't catch anything that made sense. The voices were too garbled by the vents, and too far away still. Victor noticed that the voices sounded strange somehow. Different. For a moment he thought of shouting out, but anything these people heard the people on his side would surely hear also. It was time to go back.

When he got back to the vent maintenance room he found Lucas, Miguel, and Wright Two waiting.

Lucas looked visibly relieved. "Don't scare us like that. We thought maybe a maintenance droid got to you before the reset or something."

Victor laughed sheepishly. "Naw. I thought I'd try to make some use of myself and go exploring."

"Well, your days of vent crawling are done. At least for now," Miguel said.

Victor reserved his excitement. They might be about to repeat what Fumio had told him.

Lucas nodded. "That's right Victor. Everyone saw. When Roger got out to the hall after class, the hall drones didn't follow him. They went back to their normal routes."

"He looked scared shitless," Miguel laughed. Wright Two, Frank, was silent but smirking.

"I'm free," Victor said smiling. And he knew that it was true.