40. RAVEN

40

RAVEN

It's barely six in the morning when my phone rings.

Maddy shifts on my chest. We haven't moved or changed positions from how we fell asleep. It's quiet outside, the rain still clacking against the windows, but the winds subsided.

I pick up my phone. It's Archer.

"What's up?" I ask.

"We have a situation."

Maddy lifts her sleepy face at me and squints, my arm falling from her shoulder. I silently curse Archer with every word possible for breaking this moment with her.

"What kind of situation?" I ask.

"There's a riot in Port Mrei."

The news makes me disentangle myself from Maddy and swing my feet off the bed.

"Bad?" I ask.

"Worse than we could have ever expected, Raven. Butcher's guys are destroying the surveillance cameras. We are losing Port Mrei minute by minute."

"I'll be right there," I say as I put on my shoes.

Sonny is fast asleep.

Maddy is wide awake, scrambling off the bed and hugging herself with her arms. "Something happened?"

I don't answer. I don't want her to be worried.

I call Ali, tell him to get to Maddy, and cast one last glance at her. "You'll be all right," I say, then nod to sleeping Sonny. "This little dude can sleep through another world war," I say, making Maddy smile.

There. At least I leave her smiling.

"Be careful," she says as I close the door behind me and smile at her words as I walk into the rain.

It's surprisingly loud at the Center. Something is definitely happening. The sky-color ceilings are bright and sunny. The waterfall soundtrack in the background is peaceful. It smells like coffee and rain. But dozens of people gathered here are agitated. Marlow and his security team stand in front of the row of dozens of screens on the wall, showing live surveillance footage.

I walk fast toward him and notice Archer, Ortiz, and Bishop already here.

"What's happening?" I ask, raking my fingers through my wet hair as I look at one of the screens.

Oh, fuck…

My blood chills at the sight.

"It's Port Mrei," Bishop says.

I can see that. What I'm seeing is that out of the thirty cameras we have in the town itself, only ten or so are lit up. The rest are blank. The live ones show people everywhere. It's barely light outside, pouring, but the chaos on Port Mrei streets is unmistakable.

First, it looks like an emergency. Maybe the hurricane wiped away the houses, and people are scrambling. The cameras are still in night mode, so it's hard to say.

Then another camera flickers off.

And another.

"Fuck," someone murmurs.

I step closer and study one of the screens. There are men. And the chaos is not the desperate crowd of people. No. This is a different scenario, a mob.

"It's a riot," I say the obvious.

"Oh, it's not just a riot," Ortiz says. "Show him the footage from four hours ago."

The cyber operations specialist points at the biggest screen, and I see a building on 6 th Street, the unmistakable fence of the local jail. A group of people approaches the gates. They walk in. The video fast forwards to dozens of people pouring out of those gates twenty minutes later.

"There was no explosion or anything. How did they get out?" I ask, turning to look at Marlow, then Bishop and Ortiz, who grimly stare at the cameras.

Archer is the one who speaks. "They were let out. Butcher released the prisoners."

"Just like that."

"I suppose, yes."

Another camera feed goes blank. "Wait," Ortiz says, "rewind that feed, the one that just went off."

The IT guy replays the last thirty seconds in slow motion. And that's when I realize that the person standing in front of the camera is not a man. It's a kid. A little one, only ten or so. He swings his arm, and for a second before the camera goes off, it gets really bright.

"What the actual fuck?" Marlow murmurs.

"Kids"

"What?"

"Fuck," Bishop says. "It's kids killing the cameras with some sort of explosives. Rewind it again."

Marlow's radio beeps, and the guard passes on the message that the luxury cars that no one bothered to clear for the hurricane at the East Entrance to Ayana are blown up.

"Fuck," Marlow curses. "How did they get to the East Entrance?"

Archer ruffles his hair as Marlow snaps into the radio. "How did they get to the East Entrance unnoticed?"

Ortiz snaps his fingers at the IT guy. "Pull up the East Entrance cameras."

And sure enough, they are blank.

"Fuck!" Marlow snaps.

While the IT guys rewind the Port Mrei cameras, we realize one horrific truth.

"Most of the cameras were knocked down by kids," Ortiz says the verdict.

"Kids are in on it?" one of the IT guys asks.

"They wouldn't know where all the cameras are. That means they were trained."

Marlow exhales through his lips. "This started happening four hours ago."

"In the middle of the storm?" I ask.

"Yep. We thought it was the hurricane hitting Northern Zion hard. Until Bishop called, said the center of the hurricane shifted away from Zion, didn't even reach us technically, so no way the cameras were knocked out by the winds."

"You didn't call me right away?"

Archer steps in. "We thought it was just a small riot."

"Sir?" one of the IT guys says. "Why are we not dispatching the guards to Port Mrei?"

No one answers. The answer is clear: we don't have enough security personnel to protect Ayana and deal with the riot in Port Mrei, especially in weather like this. Ayana's security is the priority, and we are not even sure we can trust all of our guards.

That's our biggest problem. Guards are a whole different beast. Former mercenaries, contractors, who've been to hell and back. We are all human, and we learned after the Change what that means—a slight shift of circumstances, where it's "them or I," and we are ready to do the most atrocious things. The guards at Ayana are paid really well. But loyalties shift. Bribes are delicious. Most of all, people get bored, and so do guards. And they stop caring who they get paid by.

Archer motions to us for attention. "My office."

In his office, Marlow, Bishop, and I take seats. Ortiz walks around, his hands on his waist as he is deep in his thoughts.

Archer leans against his desk and lights a cigarette. He never smokes in his office and barely ever in his house anymore, since Katura moved in. He is nervous, and thank God for the team we have here, specifically Bishop and Ortiz, who is quickly becoming a man in charge.

"Why didn't the security alarms go off when more than three cameras went down?" he asks no one in particular.

Marlow rubs his face with both hands. "AI security algorithm overrode itself."

"Overrode itself," Archer murmurs and chuckles bitterly.

"I don't know how it happened. The IT department is looking into?—"

"You have one fucking job, Marlow!" Archer snaps, stabbing his forefinger in the air at Marlow. "The algorithm has a glitch? You have to know. The cameras go off? You have to know. The fucking security fails? You should know why, how, when, and should've had plan B for that shit!"

Ayana relies heavily on high-tech and AI. Sure, we have plenty of guards and security systems. But they are curated and coordinated through a complex network that—imagine that—glitches.

"Why are you surprised, Archer?" I say as calmly as I can, knowing this is by no means Marlow's fault. "I told you that before. We needed to pay more attention to the foot traffic. And we weren't, not for a while. We had barely any security in town. Cameras only tell us what we see, not what's actually happening."

I nod toward the camera feeds on the screens outside his office. "How do we control that? We can't. How did your kidnapping become possible? But it did, didn't it? You can't control every person and kid in Port Mrei. You don't have enough foot soldiers for that. And that's what matters. Your security system is an alert mechanism. But it doesn't quite protect you. So, what happens when someone hacks Ayana's security and network?"

Marlow shifts his gaze to Archer. These guys grew up in a world coordinated by service staff and AI assistance. They never lived on the streets. Old school is not extinct. It's still there. And occasionally it sabotages the new world.

We go quiet, and it seems that everyone is looking through the office window at the screens of live feeds that go out one after another, as if someone has the camera grid plan. I'm sure they do.

"We are not looking at the riot," Ortiz says quietly. "We are witnessing a cleverly orchestrated security hack. We are losing Port Mrei."

It's a pack mentality. That's what a mob is. Even those who don't want to fight, knowing that this war with Ayana will only make their lives worse, do it anyway, carried away by the spike of adrenalin.

You can see the anger unraveling. Brains off. Knives out. Guns. Bats. Broken bottles. Everyone is off the rails. Class, gender, race—there's a pervasive dominant psychology connected to all those, but the rules and prejudice get erased when there's no law in sight.

And someone planned to rile those people up. There's fuck all nothing we can do unless we want to jeopardize the lives of our guards.

These are the roaring twenties, that's what they started calling the era after the Change. But the joke has long turned into a grim reality.

"Can we get more guards from the mainland on such quick notice?" Marlow asks.

Archer looks at Ortiz as if checking the permission to answer. "We could. But we don't have accommodations for them. We could set up emergency camps, sure, but then we need supplies, we need deliveries from the mainland. If we do it too fast, we take a chance on turning this into a humanitarian crisis. Is that town worth it?"

"We need to talk to Butcher," Marlow says.

"And say what?" I taunt. "Why isn't your town under control? I'll tell you why it isn't. Because Butcher wants it that way, and he orchestrated this chaos. It's convenient. It lets him shift the blame on someone. And he doesn't care that we know exactly what he is doing."

"Then?"

"Then we can fuck off from Port Mrei. We don't need it. But we need the port. It's ours. Without it, Ayana has no chance of carrying on."

Archer turns his hard gaze on me. "Then set up a meeting with Butcher and make a deal."

He knows what that might mean and that I'll have to jeopardize my life.

He corrects himself. "We can do a video chat. We don't need to do it in person. But we need to set the terms clearly."

Ortiz clears his throat. "That won't work. That will only show him that we are failing in protecting Ayana." His eyes shift to me. "That meeting has to happen in person. Possibly, on our territory."

Archer shakes his head. "It puts Raven in direct danger."

Ortiz nods. "Then let's make sure we cover all the bases. We will have that meeting with Butcher. I will go with you. But we will also bring an army with us."

I nod. There's no other way. But I don't need to tell him that no army can save one from getting a bullet in the head.