Malak's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Malak climbed into the small tower of wired coils where he watched for replies. The floating string box hummed above its base. One light blinked. One contact had answered. The other two had not. He read the counter-code on the screen. It was almost right. One character was wrong. A zero where a letter should be. His hand tightened on the scepter. He carried the signal out to the painted dish in the sand. The beam from its center split the code into pieces. He held each piece up to the light. The wrong character had not come from his contact. It had been changed in transit. Outside, the tall neon pillar at the edge of his ground still glowed where the signal had passed through. Someone had touched it. Someone was listening on the line he thought was clean. Malak walked back to the labyrinth. He pulled a cracked disc from the shelf and snapped it into the reader. The backup held his contact's true code. They were not turned. The line was. He shut down that channel. Two contacts left. He sent a new signal through a path the corporation did not know. The bird lifted from the sand and flew. He had less room now, and less time. But the work moved on.