Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 14 - What It Means - I

  Despite all the stress steadily building up since the Emergence (as Cinza had coined it), Rachel was pleased to find that Josh's cooking remained as excellent as ever.

  "Honestly, Joshua, you've outdone many a professional here," Kendra agreed, dabbing a napkin at her mouth. "I'd hire you."

  "Thanks, but I think I'm gonna be too busy," Josh said, giving a sidelong glance at Rachel. "How many catastrophes are we dealing with now?"

  Rachel sighed, stretching back in her chair. "Too many."

  "With one more on the way," Will added, looking out the front window at a car that had just arrived. Jackie joined them a few moments later, prompting Josh to fetch another serving of the salmon he'd prepared.

  "Thanks," Jackie grunted, digging in voraciously. "It's all bad," she added, wiping her face on her sleeve.

  "Totally blocked?" Rachel asked, feeling dismayed.

  "It's a disaster zone. Landslides, buncha timbers, the works. Looks like a damn earthquake rolled through." Jackie frowned. "There's no way it was natural."

  "No," Rachel agreed. "What did Robert say?"

  Jackie shrugged. "Can't clear it easily. It'll be hard work, but he's got people on it. That's all we got for now, since the trains are blocked out too. We can call in a helicopter lift if we really need it, but even that's a stretch with how many of them are tied up dealing with wildfires down south."

  "So we're alone," Will concluded, pulling out his laptop.

  "Honestly, it's not the worst circumstances to find ourselves at present," Kendra put in mildly, sipping her wine.

  "What? We're under siege here, Miss Laushire," Josh said. "Being trapped in with an angry god at our doorstep sounds pretty bad to me."

  "She's right, Josh," said Rachel. "Being cut off means we don't have to worry about the emergence spreading any further. Magic will be contained to Rallsburg for now, and that gives us time to figure out how to deal with Omega."

  "It's not like anything outside town could help us anyway, unless you want to call in the National Guard," Will added, while typing away furiously.

  "What's going on there?" Jackie asked through a mouthful of salmon.

  He spun the screen around for them. Rachel saw a scrolling feed of traffic and a breakdown of highlighted intercepted messages. Will had explained to her how he could stop anything they didn't trust from passing out through the town net, now that he had access to the municipal network administration through Rowan. The mayor, of course, had no idea that Will was involved, and simply assumed (along with everyone else) that Rachel was capable of such a feat on her own. Given a year, perhaps she might be—but time was of the essence, and Will was far more experienced in such a system than she was.

  "So far we've been pretty quiet. No unusual traffic out from either the college or the town. Most people are just watching videos, playing games or just talking about the usual things. The only traffic I've seen that even hints at magic is some private communication from Cinza, but our favorite cult leader knows her encryption. Besides the empty subject line that I pulled from the mailserver and the username 'Tezofarl', I couldn't get anything else out of it." Will shrugged. "Still, I doubt Cinza's gonna be telling anyone, right? I'd trust her with secrecy at least."

  "Quite," Kendra agreed.

  "So that just leaves our other security breach. I'm sorry to say I couldn't catch this one, as it used the cell network and made it out before I was set up on our tower. I was only able to spot it thanks to the history log and the fact that the guy sending it didn't have any security on his messages." He grinned, and Rachel felt a brief burst of warmth pulse through her. Even if she didn't share his passion for networks or computers, his enthusiasm was still infectious for her. "Kendra, your employees really are lax on their protocols."