I flipped through the files with my frown growing at every one which did not suit my needs. Guard patrols, power grid diagrams, air exchange rate models, damage simulations, troop and materiel numbers...a smorgasbord of out-of-date information, all of it useless to me.

Which sucked because normally this was my bread and butter. The things that people tended to overlook as relevant...maybe nobody cared about air exchange in the XPCA hangars, but by studying when the rates spiked, I could deduce large movements through there. Cross-referencing that against power grid records would tell me if it was just troops doing drills or machines activating, and potentially how many of which kind. Two overlooked pieces of data, and bam, I could deduce the composition of enemy forces and their times of activity. A little more and one could extrapolate total forces, optimal times to attack, and other luscious data that people would pay mad credits to get their hands on.

But again, useless. I didn't care how many they had, or of what. I needed a course of action, not a threat assessment, and there had to be something in here to help me out.

I flipped through more files, finding things closer, but still useless. Evacuation plans and supply routes. Emergency food and water caches, optimal paths to take to avoid guards in alert formation…

But not a single escape plan. You'd think that a resistance movement aimed at getting the Exhumans out of New Eden would have come up with a plan to get them out of New Eden.

I looked around the room again, craning my neck around from the cruddy chair with a stuck wheel I was perched in. It was defective left-behind garbage like everything else here, it seemed -- dark concrete, lit only by the lights we'd brought in and the holos I was scanning. The abandoned resistance base, deep beneath New Eden, empty and forsaken to all but the spiders since Athan's great uprising got all of the resistance out, or killed.

There probably were plans like that, but they were long gone, too important to be left in the ruins. There weren't any rosters or personnel files either, nothing which could be used to incriminate the resistance, should this lair be discovered. Plenty of other important documents were also categorically absent, making me think that anything we might have needed was simply gone.

Steffie wheeled back into view, pouring over another armful of tablet holos in her lap while Tower pushed her through the door.

"Find anything?" she asked, barely looking up.

"A lot, but nothing interesting," I sighed, flipping through more documents. "We've been here for hours, I can't believe there's just nothing."

"Well for nothing, there sure is a lot of it," she agreed. "I've got charts here documenting the food consumption of New Edeners and the resistance, to calculate how much they could squirrel away without drawing attention. Even if you hate him, you have to admit that Soran ran a heck of a tight ship."

"Yeah, doesn't surprise me that he accounted for everything. Kind of in his ticket."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Steffie asked, looking up to narrow her eyes at me.

"Not again, you two," Tower groaned, loud enough to echo in the empty room. I settled for kicking my feet up higher on the table and displacing another cloud of dust.

"This is a waste of time anyway," Steffie continued, ignoring Tower's grimace. "We should be finding how to save Jack, not how to escape."

"A fact you have mentioned many, many times now."

"Girls," Tower snapped. "You do remember that New Eden makes people quite pissy? Y'don't think maybe it's affecting you two?"

I frowned at him. I was fine, I knew that much, but Steffie was certainly acting like the menses fairy was backed up for almost a week now, and she was driving me nuts.

Of course, I wasn't going to say that, but of course, her mouth fell open and she said exactly that. Well, not exactly that.

"Excuse me? You two? I am perfectly fine. I am trying to get things done and stop wasting my time while Lia and you are fucking around like you could not care less that Jack is out there, waiting for us, maybe suffering...maybe even dying--"

"Oh, don't be dramatic," I hissed.

"DYING out there, Lia. I know you have the emotional capacity of a psychopath--"

"Excuse me?" I stared at her. "Psychopath?"

"Time out, time out!" Tower shouted, gesturing wildly between us. I glared at her, wondering, if I were psycho, would I just kill her at this point? The prospect was getting more attractive every time she opened her dumb mouth.

I turned back to my work, doing my best to ignore her. I'd do it for Jack if nothing else. I liked Steffie, outside of New Eden, and I reminded myself that as much as she might piss me off right now, getting her out was by far the best solution, even as thoughts like 'she deserves this' kept bubbling through my mind.

"How are you so calm, Tower?" I asked him, changing the topic as I thumbed through another dissertation on waste product flow through New Eden. Maybe we could get out with the trash? Apparently only if we escaped a scan, and then a slicing, seperation, and potentially incineration. So perhaps not.

"Me? I just try to focus on what needs to get done. A lot of the time," he glanced significantly at Steffie "I know I can't do anything, and when that happens, I'm accustomed to supporting and waiting while others do the hard work."

She made a pfeh noise and buried herself in the tablets.

"But yeah, it sucks," he said. "I'm feeling short-tempered too in here, like I'm hot and hungry all the time, and it's really irritating. I didn't know it would be this bad.

"It gets worse the longer you stay," Steffie said. "When I was in here before, it was enough to make people crazy. If Soran didn't find me," she said, glaring at me significantly, "I don't know what I would have done. Gone crazy, or worse."

Ah. I knew she was...grateful to him, I guess, but I never considered that she thought he'd saved her life or anything. Still seemed stupid to me, considering he'd ruined her life, by kidnapping and paralyzing her, but hey, what the heck did I know, right?

I kept my mouth shut as Tower talked her down a little more, doing a generally great job of sympathizing with her and telling her things she needed to know while not being condescending...that guy had a real knack for always making you feel like he was on your side and going through the same ish, which was exactly what she needed right now.

And I needed some friggin' intel on a plan. We were getting dangerously low on options here, and honestly, I was looking for something--anything--other than the current plan.

Which was, by the way, Tower smacks a hole in the wall with a Steffie-club. As much fun as it'd be to clobber her face-first into the wall, I was hoping for something with a little more...subterfuge. Less chance of immediately getting owned by the guard, anyway.

I frowned as I pulled up another file, this one simply named OPERATION: SUBARU, the contents encrypted behind a password. No other file I'd encountered thus far had been protected beyond the general system protections, and so I felt my toes curling in excitement as I leaned forward to see what we had here.

Plain document. Small filesize. Modified only once since creation...someone sat down and penned the file in a single sitting. In...four minutes, I counted. Judging by the size, and assuming the encryption didn't bloat that too much, it looked approximately the same as some of the smallest files I'd been looking at, three pages or so, tops.

The blinking cursor on the password line taunted me. Subaru.

The name had some prior associations for me, but I knew that wasn't all there was to it. Aside from belonging to a particular douchecanoe, I had learned by dating him that it was a common Japanese name, that it meant 'unite' in Japanese, and it was their name for the Pleiades star cluster. It also used to be the name of a brand of car, now merged into one of the tech conglomerates, and which used those stars as a logo. I found that one out during my phase of obsessively searching his name on the 'net in the throes of moronic teen passion.

What it meant as an operation name of a secret resistance group, I had no idea. I could hope they were the kind to put too fine a point on their codenames and it was somehow related to some kind of unity...but unless they were really bad at passwords, that wouldn't be much help.

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The holo buzzed at me as I tried UNITY. Then again at TOGETHER, ACCORD, UNION, SOLIDARITY.

"What are you doing over there?" Tower asked. I showed him what I'd found and he scratched his head. "The heck is a Subaru?"

"Oh," he said when I explained what I knew. "Uh, did you try oneness?"

"Or peace?" Steffie said.

I tried both. Buzz. Buzz.

"It's probably none of these," I said. "I was just hoping they'd be lazy with their passwords. Odds are we're not getting in, though. Wish AEGIS were here."

I tried again, but it was, alas, not PASSWORD either.

"Password1?"

"1234?"

"Drowssap?"

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. The cursor just kept blinking at me.

"Yeah we're not getting through there. Just hope it's nothing important," Steffie said.

"You're probably right," I agreed, trying a few more just in case. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

"Okay, knock it off," she snapped. I sighed and moved on to other files, irritated to let that blinking cursor win, but knowing that I wasn't just going to randomly guess a password...that would kind of invalidate the whole point of passwords as a system.

Still, it nettled me, more than it should have. Why'd it have to be named Subaru? On top of the situation with Steffie, just seeing that name made my chest go tight with the shame and embarrassment and cringing at how friggin' moronic I'd been back when I was with him. Hurting Saga that day had been the biggest regret of my life, and I'd done it for that douchecanoe? Really, past me? He was the best I thought I'd get?

Stupid. And now I was seeing his face in my mind every time I went back to the file list and saw that name sitting there, no matter how hard I tried not to look at it.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

"Okay what the hell did I just say?" Steffie barked, dropping her holo in her lap with a clatter. "I told you to stop wasting time with that stupid shit."

"I'm just trying a few more things. It's the only encrypted file we've found, and it might be important."

"Be that as it may, you aren't getting in, so stop buzzing and pissing me off," she said.

STEFFIEISABITCH. Buzz. It might have been the incorrect password, but it wasn't wrong.

"Okay, knock it off, both of you," Tower butt in. "Lia, is it really that important to keep buzzing? Can't you just mute it or something?"

"No, it's a system alert, not letting me mute it."

"Then lets work in separate rooms?" he suggested. When Steffie just harrumphed at me, he sighed and wheeled her out.

I shook my head at her one last time before turning back. UNIFICATION. CONCORD. INTEGRATION. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

What was I even doing here? Was two hours in the dark enough to turn me into a stupid? I was almost certainly just acting out of boredom and frustration.

STUPID. MORON. IDIOT. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

I'd trawled through hundreds of pointless files already and this was, by far, the most engaging, which was just pathetic. I stared down the blinking cursor, feeling the memories of Subaru's slimy presence oozing through my mind, making me shudder with surfacing shame.

IHATESUBARU. JERKASSBOYFRIEND. DOUCHECANOE. Buzz. Buzz. Ding.

Ding. Ding?

I blinked as the file opened up in front of me, loading a sparse page of text and a few images. A map of New Eden, and a diagram of the familiar PA-speaker poles within it.

My mind wasn't taking any of that in. Ding?

Ding?

On DOUCHECANOE?

There was no way that could have been right. That was the nickname Athan and I used to refer to him because mentioning him by name had a negative affect on my temperament, as I'd been demonstrating so well here. He was just that jerk ex that came up sometimes when I was feeling particularly irritated, or when Athan was dealing with an incredibly ignorant or entitled Exhuman, the douchecanoe was a point of reference we could both relate against.

But as a password? On a file baring his name? My mind was reeling at the odds.

I stood up suddenly and, distracted, banged my knee on the desk, hopping and yelping and wondering why, why, did I ever take off my slipskin, ever?

It was very effective for taking my mind off the password for a moment though. Long enough for Tower to pop his head in the door and squint at me in the relative dark, backlit by my holo.

"What was that noise?" he asked "All right in here?"

"Uh, yeah," I said, rubbing the knee with my knuckles. "I uh, got the password, and was just surprised."

"Oh, really? Wow," he said, sidling up. "What's in it, then?"

"I dunno," I said, sitting down again, still kneading my knee. "Looks like...a map of New Eden, and diagrams, of the PA towers."

"Each one's got a label," he said, pointing across the map, which highlighted each tower on it. And so they did, but not descriptive labels as I might have expected, nor 'Tower 1', 'Tower 2', or the like. Instead, a complicated, long code with lots of numbers and letters in it.

I scrolled past the first page and found, in plain english, text describing the operation. As I read, my mouth fell open, and I glanced at Tower and found his matching mine.

"Holy cow," he said. "Am I reading this right?"

"Yeah. This is incredible. We can use this. We can absolutely use this."

I picked up a nearby holo and began entering the passwords at once, my mind racing with the possibilities of how best to turn our new information to our advantage.

There were a lot of potential options, and a whole mess of messes that we could use these to make, but as broad as our options were, my priorities were simple: Get myself out of New Eden without detection. Act fast so I didn't throw Steffie into conniptions. And of course, minimizing harm to the Edeners, New Eden, and the XPCA.

And it felt like a key was just dropped into my hands which could turn the wheels on all of these desires at once. A glorious, incredible gift, left behind just for me by the resistance who'd been here before.

From Subaru, the douchecanoe. I was a little too enthralled by what we had to worry too much about where I found it.

A couple of hours later, I'd made my arrangements and Tower, Steffie and I were at the base of the wall surrounding the city. Grey concrete stretched into the sky, plunging this whole section into perpetual shadow and cold, a dismal corner where no Exhumans lived by choice.

"You've made your preparations?" Tower asked, and I nodded. "And you're sure this is the best course of action?" I nodded again. "You'll have to go fast. And make sure you're behind me."

I nodded again, my face almost completely level with one of his buttocks, twice as wide as I was. Not the best view, but given what we were doing, better than being eradicated.

"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath and cradling Steffie in his arms. "Send the thing, I guess."

"You guys just stay safe. Be with the other Edeners. We'll come for you," I said.

"You stay safe. We're going to make a mess up here, and you'd better come out of it alive."

I grinned at him. "Staying safe is what I do best." He shook his head at me, but didn't stop me as I tapped a few screens on my mobile and then held down the final button.

The PA poles accepted the override codes I sent them and began screaming, their speakers blaring to life at every frequency, at maximum volume, producing every sound we could hear, and many beyond.

Wailing filled the air, harmonically overlapping and distorting with itself as the noise echoed through the city. Tower tried to say something to me, but his voice was gone, I couldn't hear anything but the echoing, multilayered air.

I gave him a thumbs-up and pressed myself behind his butt. He gave me one final expression of disbelief, and then held Steffie aloft like a battering ram, reading her feet-first at the wall right next to us. She said something, but I didn't think Tower even noticed.

And then he brought her crashing in, with an explosion of stone and black goop and rebar and wire. A blast so tall it almost reached the top of the wall, and throwing so much debris that my skin went cold from the added darkness.

But the blast felt strange and wrong, silent under the all-pervasive sound. I felt the shockwave wash over and around us, blocked by Tower, but still enough to knock the houses nearest us off-kilter, like they would fall flat at any moment, but there was no noise to accompany the shockwave but the trilling filling my ears.

Tower reached back and grabbed me roughly, throwing me with all his strength through the new hole, which was bubbling with more black goop, structure foam, already sealing the breach. There would be an alert, but with the current signal disruption, which should be broad-spectrum enough to interfere with electronics as well as audio, I'd have time to make my escape. The last thing I saw through the sealing hole was Tower, waving at me before vanishing behind a shiny new slick of blackness.

When the wall closed, it was like my ears popping. The source of the sound was sealed up, coming at me from over the tall wall, and suddenly I could hear my heart pounding, the sand shifting under my feet, hear a direction the wail was coming from...tiny things, but important ones to make me think 'okay, so I wasn't just going crazy.'

And then I ran. I wasn't invisible, and if any guards were somehow still looking out, they'd surely see the girl jogging across the desert. It wasn't my intention to get out here just so I could be recaptured and thrown back in. I hoofed it hard and fast, eager to put the city and the painful ringing behind me.

It was less than twenty minutes before I was facing capture again.

The man wore a grey slipskin like mine, but the pistol in his hands was new to me. He squinted at me in the desert sun, clearly ready for me long before I reached him, shaking his head like he couldn't believe I'd do something so stupid.

It could have been the end of the road for me. Associated with Athan as I was, and with the influence I'd been getting inside the walls, if the XPCA knew I'd escaped and been recaptured, there were good odds, they'd just decide I wasn't worth keeping alive. No matter how good my rep with a few of the soldiers may be, it really wasn't men but policy which determined who lived and who didn't.

So it was rather fortunate that the guy bringing me in wasn't just anyone. A hunter, an XPCA...heck, even a federal agent or police might have been the end of me. But this guy was a true professional, a spy and agent of the highest caliber.

Taglock smiled at me and gave me the curtest of polite nods as he hit me with a shot of knockout gas and I felt the world slipping away, the desert streaking into one mess of blurry white and red, like cherries stirred into yogurt.

"Next time you wake up, you'll be back in New Eden," he warned me, and I fell away from the world.

I tried to say anything, but before I could even put together how to do that, the drug took hold and the world slipped away from me into a seamless, hazy dark.