The Boy in the Alley

The Master Purge

Three minutes. That is all the time we have before Kanmi erases everything.

The small red screen on Zara's communicator blinks faster, ticking down the seconds like a tiny bomb. The air in the underground station suddenly feels heavy and thin. Around us, the yellow emergency lights begin to flicker and die, replaced by a harsh, blinding crimson strobe.

Zara laughs, coughing up a little blood as he tries to sit up against the metal crate. "You think you won, Simeon? Kanmi does not care about me, and he certainly does not care about this station. The master purge will wipe every file, every server, and every person down here into nothingness."

I grab him by the collar of his torn lab coat and haul him straight up to his feet. My hands glow with hot black fire, casting sharp shadows across his pale face.

"Stop laughing and tell me how to stop the purge," I demand, my voice hard enough to break stone.

Zara’s eyes dart to the blinking screen, then back to me. A reckless, desperate grin spreads across his face. "You cannot stop it from the outside. The master command has to come from the main mainframe terminal inside the upper district tower. If you stay here, you die with the station. If you go up there, Kanmi's enforcers are waiting to put a bullet in your brain."

Before I can answer, Ifeoma steps in. Her face is completely calm, her eyes sharp as she looks at Zara. She does not raise her voice, but her tone cuts through the noise of the alarms like a blade.

"He is lying about one thing," Ifeoma says quietly.

I look over at her. "What do you mean?"

"The purge is not just a timer," Ifeoma explains, her fingers tapping fast against the glass screen of her own handheld device. "It is a remote upload. Kanmi is trying to pull the entire simulation core out of the underground servers and into the main tower. That means the tower's firewall is wide open right now."

Kade steps up beside us, reloading his plasma rifle with a sharp clack. "What are you saying, Ifeoma?"

"I am saying we do not run away from the purge," Ifeoma replies, a cold, calculated smile touching her lips. "We ride it straight up into the tower."

Zara stares at her in pure disbelief. "Are you insane? The data current will fry your nervous system the second you touch it."

"Maybe," Ifeoma says smoothly. "But we are taking you with us to test the theory."

Without waiting another second, Ifeoma grabs Zara by the arm and shoves him toward the heavy maintenance lift at the back of the station. Kade covers our rear, firing a single burst from his rifle to smash the electronic lock on the lift doors. The metal doors slide open with a loud groan, revealing a vertical shaft glowing with bright blue energy cables running straight up into the ceiling.

"Get inside," I tell Zara, shoving him into the cramped lift car.

Ifeoma and I jump in right behind him, and Kade pulls the emergency lever to close the heavy steel doors.

"Good luck," Kade calls out through the small wire mesh window before the doors seal shut. "I will hold the lower level as long as I can."

The lift shudders violently. With a deafening mechanical roar, the car shoots upward at incredible speed, racing through the vertical cable shaft like a bullet.

The G-force hits my chest like a physical blow. The walls of the shaft blur into a single streak of glowing blue light as we fly past level after level of the corporate facility. Zara stumbles, grabbing the handrail to keep from falling as his face goes completely gray.

"The purge is at sixty seconds!" Zara yells over the roar of the engine. "We are going to hit the firewall at full speed!"

"Good," I say.

I step forward, lifting my hands as the black fire flares up across my skin once more. I do not wait for the lift to stop. I press my glowing palms directly against the thick steel door of the lift car.

The metal instantly begins to white-hot melt under the heat of the flames.

"What are you doing?!" Zara screams, trying to pull away from the door.

"Opening our way in," I reply.

With a final push of raw energy, I kick the melting steel doors outward. The lift shoots past the upper district security floor, and we burst out into a massive, open-air control room filled with rows of glowing glass terminals and towering computer banks.

Alarms wail through the upper tower, flashing bright crimson lights across the polished marble floors.

We tumble out of the lift, crashing hard onto the floor. I scramble to my feet, my hands burning with dark fire as I look around the room.

Standing at the far end of the control center, facing a massive floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the glittering skyline of Neo-Chicago, is Director Kanmi.

He slowly turns around. He holds a heavy digital control pad in one hand, and a cold, satisfied smile rests on his scarred face.

"Welcome to the top, Simeon," Kanmi says, his deep voice echoing off the glass walls. "I was wondering when you would finally show up for your execution."