A shower and a hasty breakfast later and the three of them were walking swiftly through the AmpCore halls, and Piper felt a strange sense of excitement. Not about seeing Toran – god, no – but about Casimir, and the prospect of finding anything about her father. She felt lighter too, after sharing it all with Odiye and Arrow.
A little less alone with the world.
Knowing what they were about to ask, however, she suddenly realised how much she wanted her amplifier back. According to Arrow the carefully crafted personal weapons were under lock and key in one of the Forges, watched over by one of Demir's lackeys at all times.
Piper wanted hers back. She felt a tingle in her fingers; felt the voice in her head twist and writhe with approval. Looking at her fingers, she wondered how much damage she might be able to do without the focusing power of the wand. The dangers of doing such things had been drummed into her pretty clearly by the instructors, but she was hardly a normal student. Maybe she could do what others couldn't? She'd already proved she could take control of a wraith. What other powers might be lurking in her bones?
Hopefully Toran would be willing to provide some answers.
Toran Knox, however, was not where he was supposed to be. According to the academy datastreams he ought to have been assisting a Combustive combat seminar, but when they slunk into the training area, they only found Senior Mattise, and he looked equally infuriated at Toran's absence.
"If you find him, tell him he and I are going to have a very long and unpleasant conversation," the instructor growled angrily between teaching a pair of younger students how to wield the combustive bolts without killing each other. "He's supposed to be helping turn these jangle-boned weaklings into damned operatives! But instead I'm sprinting around this place like I've got a god-damned fire under my arse." He paused his rant long enough to glower at them. "And what the hell are the three of you up to anyway? If you had any sense you'd be keeping a low profile."
"We just wanted to speak to him," Odiye said, doing his best to sound innocent.
Mattise eyed him balefully for a moment. "About what?"
"About seeing if he could help getting our privileges reinstated," Piper lied without skipping a beat. "He's in Skiltron. He's got pull."
"I suppose he does." Mattise's amplifier twitched with irritation. "Get out of here, all of you. And for god's sake, try not to do anything else to piss off the board. They were a hairsbreadth from kicking the lot of you out of AmpCore for good."
"But for your word?" Arrow enquired.
"I couldn't possibly say." He made a shooing motion. "Now go."
Piper retreated with the others, a little surprised by Mattise's words. Granted, he was more understanding than most when it came to the instructors, but he certainly didn't like her. He didn't seem to like anyone down here. Would he really have stuck his neck out for them against AmpCore's board of directors?
In the end, she supposed it didn't matter. They were still here, and she had no intention of playing nice with Toran, Mattise, the board, or anybody else. Not until she got some answers.
Finding Toran after that took a lot longer than she would have liked, but they eventually traced him through the academy (with some discreet amplifier work from Arrow) until they found themselves in an unobtrusive little office squirrelled away in the academy's administration wing. It was a comparatively drab part of the structure – blazing corporate adverts notwithstanding – and not the sort of place she expected a son of Skiltron to be hanging around.
When they finally got there, Piper heard two voices beyond the metal door, muffled enough to obscure the words. It was a male and female though. She braced herself, reasoning that there was probably only one girl likely to be hidden away in a room with Toran like this. Exhaling a short breath, she straightened up and passed her hand over the door release.
It slid open revealing Toran.
But he wasn't with Ferra.
"Well, well, Holly," Toran chuckled, turning as Piper and the others crossed the threshold. "If it isn't the rest of your little rebel band?"
Standing beside him, Holly shot him a sour look. "You helped us."
"I just got out of the way."
"That's all they needed."
Piper frowned. Both of them looking infuriatingly fresh. She hadn't seen Holly the night before, but Toran had been slamming back drinks with the best of them. Piper wondered if the Skiltron darling had an AIP tech on call to cure hangovers along with anything else. The screen behind them was alive with a blaze of what looked like some kind of contracts, but it wasn't anything she understood.
"Where's Ferra?" she asked eventually, unable to shake an uncomfortable feeling that the Queen of the Sharks was about to descend on them at any moment.
"Ferra?" Toran smiled slyly. "She's got her claws into the wraith we recovered from Cutter Jennings' little hideout."
"Oh?" Piper raised an eyebrow. "I thought after-,"
"It's got nothing to do with you," he said sharply. "You know Ferra hates those things. With or without any of us, she's going to hunt down whoever's been stupid enough to start building wraiths again, and I would not want to be them when she does."
"So we're all on the same side," Holly chuckled awkwardly.
"I wouldn't go that far." Toran gave her a scornful glance,
"Feels like it's been a little while," Odiye said, acknowledging Holly with a nod. "Everything alright? Never known you to miss a party."
"Some of us felt there were more important things to do." She gave him a wry smile and motioned towards Toran with her head.
"And what are you two doing?" Arrow snapped, their voice like a shard of glass. Piper glanced at them in surprise, finding a grim expression on her friend's face. Arrow didn't waver though, their eyes locked onto Holly like they thought they could burn the girl to dust with just their gaze.
"Arrow?" Piper nudged them. "Easy now."
Arrow bristled, but their expression damped a little. They nodded to Holly. "Well?"
"Well someone's got to keep working on the big picture don't they?" Toran replied before Holly could speak. "We're trying to find out what is actually going on out there."
"And what's going on here," Holly interjected. She held Arrow's stare, folding her arms as she spoke. "We all know that only corporations have the resources to do this. That means somebody with their fingers in AmpCore."
"Funny you should say that," Odiye began. "Arrow told us-,"
"Nothing," Arrow snapped, giving him a light slap. "It was nothing. Forget it. What did you two find?"
Toran let out a faint snort of amusement, and jerked a thumb towards the screen behind him. "You're just in time. You might be interested to know that our little chat with Lenor Karga wasn't a total waste of time. I did a bit of digging on Hippolyta Fabrications." He grinned. "Slippery bastards, keep their cards close to their chests." The grin broadened, showing his teeth. "But some of us know how the slip around a little better."
"Maybe you can stop being so smug," Piper growled, "and tell us what you found."
"They're minnows – fall guys," Holly explained, her expression darkening as she looked at Toran.
"They're a fucking smokescreen." Toran spread his hands wide. "But my dad pulled their contracts out from under Karga's ass. They've been fabricating a lot of high tech gear that their budget would never allow for."
"So they're being bankrolled."
"Exactly. Bankrolled to make a lot of shit they shouldn't be."
"Toran traced the shipments," Holly said, looking a lot more ill-at-ease than her companion. "They contract out to Gammaton for their freight guidance. We can track them down. See exactly where they shipped those parts."
Piper's eyes widened. "You think you can find where the wraiths are coming from?"
"It's possible. But Hadrian's a big city-,"
"Lighten up, would you?" Toran rolled his eyes. "It'll narrow it down enough. Once we know where to look we just start kicking down doors. You can only hide a fucking codewraith factory in so many places."
Holly shrugged helplessly. "I'm just saying."
"Look, I can run the trace right now," Toran said. Then smirked. "I guess I'm going to have to, since I'm the only one in this little gang of miscreants who's still got his amplifier."
Arrow cocked an eyebrow and tugged their spare wand free, dangling it in front of him. "Not quite."
"I'm not letting you into this system with that second-hand knock-off," Toran chuckled with a shake of his head. "I'll manage."
"Laugh it up." Arrow rolled their eyes and shoved their amplifier back into its holster. "Just try not the burn out the system, amateur."
Toran winked at them before turning his back, facing the shimmering screen and extending his amplifier in one hand. He touched it softly against the edge of the display, and Piper felt the pulse as he connected to the datastreams.
They waited. She folded her arms tight, trying to tamp down her impatience. Beside her she felt Odiye's discomfort as he watched and waited. She noticed something else though. The fearsome feelings she'd given in to the previous night were no longer overrunning her mind. They were still there, somewhere – she could feel that much – but the bubbling, boiling desire seemed to have faded.
Perhaps they'd both just needed to get it out of their systems.
Something is wrong.
The voice burst into her mind with frightening suddenness and it took all her self-control not to yelp in surprise. She looked at the floor, clasping her hands tightly together.
What?
The computer. Can't you feel it?
Feel what?
But even as she let the question echo in her mind, she did feel it. She felt something blazing through the data stream, something wild and feral riding the waves towards them. She winced, trying to pinpoint it – where it was going and where it had come from. Piper didn't know enough about the intricacies of the Logistic Principle to fully grasp what she was feeling. She knew how to fight; the subtler arts of AmpCore were still alien to her.
"Here we go," Toran murmured, gently letting his head loll from side to side as he worked. "Just a few more seconds..."
Something is coming.
"Toran!" Arrow's sudden shriek wrenched her attention back to the real world.
They lunged forward, barging Piper aside and grabbing Toran by the scruff of his jacket. They pulled back hard, breaking his connection to the data stream just as the computer exploded.
Piper ducked, shielding her face with her arms, hissing as a shard of screen cut across her right hand. Through the pain and the surprise she felt a surge of conscious energy – something vindictive and desperate bursting out of that computer, as firm and tangible as the fire and glass. It wanted to kill them.
Arrow and Toran went flying backwards away from the detonation, crashing into Odiye and sending all three of them crashing to the floor. Piper shot back to her feet, implants flaring as she looked frantically through the smoke.
"Holly?!"
"I'm alright!" the young woman coughed back, emerging a second later with one hand over her mouth. Her amplifier glowed in the other. "What the fuck was that?"
"I don't..." Piper shook her head blankly before scrambling over to her prone companions. She helped a swearing and cursing Toran to his feet, before extracting Arrow from the tangle of limbs. "Shit, are you guys okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay," Arrow replied, wincing. Piper saw a shallow cut beneath their eye leaking crimson. They hacked out a cough; rolled their jaw from side to side.
"Odiye?"
"I'm good." Odiye shoved himself into a sitting position. Furthest away, he'd been spared the worst of the blast, and a baffled look was etched across his face. "What happened?"
"Feedback jolt," Arrow said hoarsely. "The really nasty kind."
"Shit, shit."
Holly shook her head in bewilderment. "I don't get it. You weren't hacking anything. We already had those files open. It was just the trace programme..."
"Someone must have been monitoring what you were doing." Arrow took a step forward. They hesitated. Then one hand extended just far enough to touch Toran on the arm. "If you'd been hooked up to that screen when it went off..."
"I'd be dead."
He didn't pull away. Toran looked back over his shoulder at them, one eye bloodshot with burst capillaries and the right side of his face lashed with thing smears of blood where a shower of broken screen had caught him.
And he was shaking with anger.
She saw the plates beneath his feet creak and snap as power leaked out of his implants. He twisted his neck from side to side with a growl of effort, and the invisible waves of force were dragged back under control, but the veins still bulged in his neck. Piper took a step back when he looked at her.
"Piper," he hissed, his bloodshot eye twitching. "What exactly did you want to talk to me about?"
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