It was right. I’d forgotten about that. The data port for the secondary station, the one needed for this sort of override, anyways, was tucked into the sitter’s well, hidden behind a panel that covered a false back in one of the holds. A crude measure, sure, but not an ineffective one. I thought back to the Hedonism invasion a couple of years ago, when all the Americans’ planning, timing, and near-flawless execution to put their blackhats at the terminal had gone to pot because it took them a full two minutes to locate the access panel. Yankee blood had rained that day.

Well, there was nothing for it now. I got down on all fours, wincing at the pressure on my knee as it bore a quarter of my weight with only thin layer of sterine between it and unforgiving tile.

Need to take better care of yourself, don’t you? That old Lacrosse injury is bothering you more and more as you get older? Or is it something else, perhaps? Something new these past few hours, causing it swell and flame?

I eased my way under the console. I grabbed one of the crossbeams as I did, and used it to flip myself onto my back. The pressure on my knee abated, but only partway. All of a sudden I understood why Ramsay had removed his suit.

“The gear?”

“Sure.”

I held out a hand and felt the cable and then the fail-safe press themselves into my palm. I set them next to me and groped in the semi-darkness for the release to the access panel.

There was none.

Shit.

“Screwdriver,” I sighed, and held out my hand again. I heard Ramsay shuffle off, then return a moment later. The requested tool found its way into my fingers. It was sticky.

“Ram?” I asked. “Did you pull this out of Charles?”

“Yeah,” he answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Jesus Christ…”

“What? It’s not like we’re going to get infected again. Besides, you see another one lying around?”

I supposed I hadn’t, now that he mentioned it. “Still, you might have said something. Give a guy a little warning before you do a thing like that.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Next time.”

I shrugged, and pinched the blood out of the bittings as best I could. It smeared another layer on the tips of my gloves; it had come from deep within the wound, and had not had a chance to dry.

“It shouldn’t take long, once I get in there,” I said, more to fill the silence than anything as I worked the first of the screws free. It wasn’t easy. The blood, drying quickly, both blunted the teeth of the screwdriver and pasted in the head of the screw. “I really just need to set up the overrides and give myself access to the life support systems. Once that’s done, I can finish the rest from the console itself.” The first screw fell, rattling metallically down the panel before settling into the gaps between the tiles. I started on the second, which came more easily. The act of unscrewing the first had done a much better job of cleaning the screwdriver’s teeth than I ever could have. “Then I just have to open up the modules that control the atmosphere, and tell the inky to seed the oxygen supplies.”

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“What about the baubles?” Ramsay asked. “I thought we had to hack them somehow.”

“Not really.” I extracted the final screw. It clattered to join the others. Part of me wanted to gather them up, make sure I saved them so I could screw them back in when I was done. But

Tick…tick…tick…

that was ludicrous. “The baubles just need to do what they do. It’s what they’re dispersing that we need to hack.” I lifted the panel, and separated it from its housing. A single, unmarked data port yawned back at me, its pins of silica the teeth of some carnivorous plant poking through their bed of insulate. I filled it with the end of the cable, squinting through my visplate as I worked to line things up, then fitted the other end into the fail-safe.

“Booting now.”

It was strange, this urge I suddenly felt to announce everything I was doing. As the screen began to glow, generating its own tiny interface, I realized why: my fairy was nowhere in sight. Wild hope rose inside me

Is it gone is it gone already did the booting somehow fix it can we quit this stupid game?

for a fraction of a second, but Ram was quick to quash it.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s here. Still doing its job.”

I spared it a glance. I couldn’t see the thing directly, but yeah, it was there, hovering above my feet, pulsing in that eldritch blue, its reflection visible in the curve of the console as it peeled away into the lab. In a way it was almost a relief. To have it disappear like that, through no action of our own…it would have been too easy. I wasn’t sure I could have believed it.

The interface finished rendering. I swiped it with my cleanest finger, and was surprised, after the struggles we had had with the entries and with the incubation room, when it let me on the first try. I’d been ready for a war. So it was almost with a sense of shock that I navigated through to the bowels of the operating system.

“Let’s see,” I said to myself, paging through the various options, “what am I looking for here…Setup? No…too obvious. Rations? Let’s give that a try.” I tapped, and the pane that opened was pallid grey, intended to warn the user they were about to fuck with sensitive areas of the operating system, instead of the usual depthless black. I closed it again soon after. Not a place we wanted to be. One could do a lot of damage, and there weren’t really any tools available there that we didn’t have on the outside. “Installation? Nah, not trying to re-initialize here…Cartage? That looks promising…” I tapped through panel after panel, searching for the right one. It created a sort of tunneling effect as they piled on top of one another. Burrowing, deeper and deeper, like a gopher on the plains.

“I thought you said this was going to be easy,” Ramsay said.

“It will,” I answered. “Once I find what I’m looking for, it’ll be a breeze. But we don’t touch the OS every day. It’ll take a bit to find my bearings.” I tapped through another pane. “Load? Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere…”

“Well, find them fast, will ya?”

I snorted. It fogged up my visplate, sending the chillers into overdrive. “If you say so.” I scanned the options in the new panel, and tapped the one that read Templates. No. Just a set of forms used to transfer data to HQ. Trials?

Access Denied.

“Bingo.” I almost smiled.

I tapped through the error message, then highlighted the file again. But this time, instead of trying to open it, I dragged it to the trash converter. When it gave me the usual prompt to confirm, I tapped around it in a five-point star pattern, then swiped it with my other hand.

“Deny that, you son of a bitch,” I whispered, softly enough so Ramsay wouldn’t hear. I checked on him quickly and saw him standing there, unmoving, and I inferred by the position of his legs he was checking out my holo. Wouldn’t hear in my voice, anyways.