Mothbreaker's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

Mothbreaker crossed the dry lab and stopped at the plinth. The control node was a squat metal box with a recessed screen and six unlabeled keys along the bottom edge. No manual. No login prompt she recognized. She had maybe twenty minutes before the surface council reached the plant, and one wrong key would lock her out. She keyed the channel. "Neon, I'm at the node. It's not standard. Six keys, blank. Screen's asking for something but I can't read the glyphs." Neon Sentinel came back fast. "Describe them left to right." Mothbreaker read each mark. Neon Sentinel went quiet for eight seconds. "It's an old utility interface. The keys aren't commands, they're a sequence pad. You have to enter the plant's operator code before it lets you touch anything. Three tries, then lockout. I don't have the code. The permit filings didn't include it." Jolt Jinx cut in. "Then don't guess. Pull the front panel. Every node like that has a service jumper under the board. Short it and you skip the code screen. My crew used to do it on the substation boxes." "How do I know which pins?" "Two brass posts, closer together than the rest. Bridge them with anything metal. If you see three brass posts, stop, that's the wipe trigger." Mothbreaker set her light on the plinth and pried the front panel with the flat of her knife. The board came into view. She counted brass posts. Two, close together, near the corner. No third. She let out a breath she had not known she was holding. She pulled a strip of copper from her kit and laid it across the two posts. The screen blinked once and cleared. A new prompt came up in plain characters: OPERATOR MODE. GRID ROUTING. LOAD SHED. She was in. She keyed the channel. "I have control." Storm Grit's voice broke through, tight. "Good, because they just hit the south fence. Two trucks. Six on foot. You have maybe eight minutes before they're at the lab door." Mothbreaker looked at the menu. She could not rewrite the whole grid in eight minutes. She could not carry the node out. She scrolled to LOAD SHED and found the routing tables for the underground sectors. She locked those sectors to draw from the plant's own reserve line and set the lock behind a key only she held. The underground would stay lit no matter what the surface council did upstairs. The rest of the grid she left alone. It was not the whole prize. It was a piece she could keep. She pocketed the copper strip, closed the panel, and moved for the stairwell before the boots reached the second floor.