FOURTEEN - Thorn

FOURTEEN

Thorn

My lab is nearly three thousand meters underground. There's no question the garnet crystals placed in the rock and metal help sustain this facility, much as I do. Whenever I'm underground, my ears pop. It's quite annoying.

At the moment, only Justice, Kazstone, and I stand in the digital jungle. In fact, the three of us are the only ones with clearance to be down this far. Anybody with a different biometric marker will set off multiple ear-shattering alarms.

Kazstone is seated at his customary desk in the center, more than a little annoyed that he had to call me in earlier than usual. I've learned one thing about him during our time together, and that is he likes his routine.

"Hey, Kazi." Justice smiles.

I'll never understand why, but Justice loves throwing Kaz off his game. I don't mind Kazstone knowing who's in charge, but I've also found that it's a good idea not to piss off the smartest person on the planet. Plus, right now, the baiting is fucking annoying. A waste of time. I shoot Justice a look that makes him lose the grin.

He keeps trying to get closer to me, and I keep shoving him back. For some reason, the kidnapping of Alana, my Alana, has brought us closer. He would've never questioned me about killing the guard even a week ago. What is it about that woman?

Kaz types on two different keyboards at once, somehow using the full range of his hands on both. He's thirty years old with dark blond hair, strikingly intelligent green eyes, and a strong chin. I noticed his chin the first time we met, when we were just teens. It juts out and has a dimple in the middle, like Cary Grant's.

"Did you find more of the alexandrite?" I ask.

He nods. "Yes. I just made a deal with the Kayrs family out of Idaho for two large stones."

"Really?" I say. That gives us six—far more than anybody else on the planet. At least for crystals that size. As far as I have known, the Kayrs family refuses to give up jack squat.

"Yes. They're also sending over a trove of red garnets but they don't have one big enough to be close to what we need."

The Kayrs family has been around as long as my own, but they aren't involved in the influence gathering or power acclimating of the four families. I keep them at a respectful distance and know that they'll be neutral in any war. They have their own agenda and keep it locked up tight. This is a very rare moment of overlap. "What do they want?"

"A favor in the future."

Shit. I don't like that, but I'll take it. "Fine." Sometimes I wonder if I should get out of the power game, but it's not to be.

My enemies would have me killed, and plus, I need to make a safe haven for Justice and possibly Alana. I don't want to let her go. Knowing she's protected at my fortress is giving me more peace than I've had in years. Unfortunately, right now, my feet are freezing from the virus, and I'm sure it won't be long before the ice encases my heart.

Kazstone looks me over. "I can tell, you're colder."

"I am."

Kazstone opens one of the many drawers of his desk and pulls out a bowling ball-large hunk of raw red garnet—my main garnet.

"Is that ice?" I ask, moving toward it.

"It is," he says grimly.

I touch the crystal and my blood hums. It is freezing from the inside out, just like me.

"You took it out of the mainframe?" Justice growls.

"I did last week," I say. The thing is freezing at the same rate as me. Even my fingers are pricking with cold. I'm not happy that somebody is successfully killing me, but still, the ingenuity of the person is impressive. I'll kill whoever it is once I find them, but I do appreciate a good curse.

"Can you explain this to me?" Justice rubs his right eyebrow like a headache is trying to kill him.

"Sure," Kazstone says. "As far as I can tell, a private user introduced a computer virus into our system—through a social media post. I've tracked down several possible entry points, and honestly, it is eluding me so far. Once the bug invaded our system, it lurked in the garnets, especially the main one." He nods to the now-icing-over stone. "The second you connected to charge it, the virus was transferred to you."

I charge the garnets by an exchange of energy, the same as the owners of the other three social media companies do with their crystals. The transfer occurs by touch and meditation. It's quite simple, really. I gain strength and longevity afterward. Usually. Now, not so much.

Justice shakes his head. "Magic and computer science."

"And quantum physics," Kazstone says cheerfully. "I've deciphered part of the algorithm that created the digital curse. If I can unravel the entire thing, maybe we can find a cure."

This era of the internet, revitalized energy, social media companies, and the sheer volume of subscribers flinging more energy at us is a new world for everyone. None of us saw the danger coming.

"Who has the ability to create a computer or crystal virus like this?" I ask.

Kazstone glances at his monitor. "I have it. You have it. I would assume each social media family has somebody who could create it. There's no digital footprint yet. I don't know who it is." Frustration darkens his face.

His loyalty is absolute, and I hope he's as good as I believe. "Before I charge the servers, what have you discovered with the four new alexandrite pyramids?" I won't receive the ones from the Kayrs family for at least another day.

Kazstone nods toward the other two open computer hubs. "They transfer data faster than anything I've ever seen, and I'm just digging in to what they can do. I want to trace that virus that's killing you back to its source, and they're giving me the best chance."

The blood starts to thrum through my body—hopefully warming me. It has taken me a decade to find alexandrite that size, and the fact that I did it by robbing Mathias Beaumont makes the moment all the sweeter.

Justice vibrates in place. "Do you think we can stop the freezing?"

"I hope so," Kazstone says.

"We'll find an answer," I say grimly. For now, I can feel the servers weakening. It's odd I'm so in tune with the garnet crystals running our system. I walk past the center computer hub, having placed a leather thong bearing a heavy garnet around my neck, which pulses against my bare skin. The stone has been imbued with the raw energy of the earth. Most people don't know that they're standing on the biggest electromagnetic field in the solar system. But my people do. We've learned how to harness it, and the garnets are how I do it.

Justice watches me key in the code to the main hub. He doesn't know it yet, and hopefully he won't ever need it. "I can come with you."

"No." The door slides open and I move inside, waiting until it shuts behind me. He can't completely charge the main garnet until I'm dead and buried.

I walk to the heart of the server and see the three garnets now taking the place of the main one, which is icing over too quickly. I kneel and place a series of garnets from my pocket around the mainframe, creating a Celtic pattern that starts to sing and hum on its own.

Closing my eyes, I place a hand on the central three rocks and let the silence of them fill me. They begin to glow and their crimson light reflects off every surface.

Power flows through my arms, down to the floor, and then back up to the garnets, charging them. A pleasant hum fills the room and electricity arcs through the space as I spend fifteen minutes charging.

I step back and look at the silicon brains and cable arteries. For a moment, I stagger. I've given the servers all the energy I have available right now. Ignoring the pain, I walk out of the little room, back into the main hub where Kazstone and Justice wait for me.

"All good?" Justice asks, his gaze shuttered.

"Yeah," I mutter.

Kazstone looks at his screen. "Agreed. We're charged at least for the next week, but that took you longer than it should have, and I can tell the exchange abnormally exhausted you. We have to find a cure for this virus."

"Viruses don't have cures," I say, trying not to be glum, but we all know the truth.

"Yeah, but this is a virus caused by a curse." Kazstone throws his hands up.

I need a cure, not an explanation. "I'm being frozen from the inside out, or rather from the outside in," I mutter. "I already know what it is."

"It's called the fatal freeze," he says, shifting on his chair. "I found references to it back in an old code. Basically the target's body gradually lowers in temperature until, well, your heart freezes to death."

"I'm well aware." My heart was never all that warm to begin with. "Come on, I don't have all day." I move to the computer bank to the right as Justice heads to the other one. I'd like to get back to Alana.

"Okay, here you go," Kazstone says. "The alexandrite crystals are already plugged into each of the computer hubs, and I'm hoping they act as a turbo and speed up my algorithms."

I sit at the keyboard and start to type, my mind on Alana. I actually love the computer. I'm a better fighter than programmer, but in another lifetime, this could have made me happy. Hunting data in real time is a gift. That is the lesson of this century and what we've discovered by using the internet. Before, it was rumors and gossip and songs. Now it's raw, hard, sharp data that we can read.

Soon there's nothing but the sound of the three of us typing as we write algorithms to fix our servers.

Finally, I'm typing faster than the other two men as I take the lead. Hours go by. At some point, Kazstone puts coffee by my hand and I think I drink it. Finally, I reassemble all of the data. "I have it."

Kazstone and Justice stand and walk over to stand behind me. "What did you find?" Justice asks, his voice low.

I click a button and data starts scrolling across the screen.

"Is that a video?" Kazstone asks, leaning forward.

"It is." I click on it and a video comes up of Alana being interviewed on Malice Media by some influencer named Jackie. I recoil and then settle. "Alana infected our servers with the curse that's killing me?"

Kaz scrolls through his phone. "The influencer is a Jackie Lamberts, twenty years old, who died last week of an overdose."

Right. So either Alana, somebody at Aquarius Social, or an unknown actor uploaded the virus with this video. "Alana lacks the skill to create code," I murmur.

"If she didn't create the virus, then we have a problem," Justice says. "The only reason to use her like this is because . . ."

Somebody knows of my obsession with her.

Either way, this is fucked.