Chapter 74: Fake Identities

  I snapped back to life, my entire body feeling like it was burning.

  Dolos’ tampering with the timer had worked—I respawned.

  I immediately grabbed the Cogwheel’s railing before my knees could buckle.

  I had no idea how Casten Vorrick made his COG explode like that. More importantly, I had no idea why he decided killing me was so necessary that he’d wasted his final breaths on it.

  “Is everything alright, Viktor?” Alice asked, stepping toward me with a worried look.

  I nodded quickly, forcing back the phantom pain. “I’m fine.”

  Becker, seemingly oblivious to my silent struggle—or perhaps simply ignoring me—announced our arrival.

  “KNOWING is just behind this door,” she said, hopping off the Cogwheel and pointing at the door ahead.

  Alice followed her, while I trailed behind slowly. Very slowly.

  What now?

  I felt like my entire view on everything shifted between the two runs.

  There was pre-Checkpoint me, and there was this current, post-Checkpoint me—the one who’d tasted a sip of the truth and was now desperate to gulp down the rest.

  My entire strategy for KNOWING, and for Alice, changed completely as well.

  Becker got us inside, then after a quick exchange with Alice, activated KNOWING’s terminal.

  “Oh my. It seems Prime Vorrick scheduled KNOWING. I don’t think – “

  Alice cut her off, saying the exact same things she had last time.

  That’s right…Vorrick was coming. And he’s going to arrive earlier than 14:30 and fight Riven.

  I couldn’t let that happen again. This run needed to be different. But I also couldn’t be the cause of a significant change.

  For now—until Riven arrived first—I needed to focus on what I could extract from KNOWING.

  Alice had just finished convincing Becker that we needed the terminal, regardless of Vorrick’s arrival.

  “Viktor, the stage is yours,” she said.

  I nodded. “Search for a man named Wesley Slater. Former Obsidian Crow. Should be dead.”

  Becker nodded and began typing the details into the terminal.

  Alice leaned close and whispered, “But if he’s dead already, what do you expect to find out?”

  I looked at her, wondering how much she actually knew. Pre-Checkpoint Alice spoke as if she didn’t know what crystals were made of. Maybe she wasn’t like the other oligarchs? No…I couldn’t just assume that because she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen—that was the Halo Effect at work.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Checking a few hunches.”

  “Well, you better be effective with it,” she said. “With Casten coming soon, we don’t really have the luxury of time.”

  Just then, KNOWING beeped.

  “Let’s see…” Becker muttered. “He is indeed deceased. Died a year and a half ago. Only the second, and last, Obsidian Crow to fall on duty. In fact, he's the only one to die during active duty. What information do you need about him?”

  “An Obsidian Crow was killed on active duty?” Alice asked, dumbfounded. “I never heard about that. If Libra has ways to – “

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that, Miss Verldson,” Becker cut in, shifting nervously. “It says here Mr. Slater was killed by the Parasite during a mission in the Wildlands.”

  I already knew that.

  “Did he have family?” I asked.

  “One moment,” Becker said, typing some more. “A father…who’s also deceased. He died from a heart attack a month after his son.”

  So not only was Riven blaming Vorrick for leaving him for dead and hiding the truth from the people, but he was also likely blaming him for killing his father.

  A faint tremor shook the room.

  “What was that?” Alice asked, her expression tense.

  “A Libra attack,” I said, trying to speed things up. “Can we continue?”

  It didn’t work.

  She turned toward Becker. “Mrs. Becker, are we protected here? Will they try to reach KNOWING?”

  “Oh, Miss Verldson, I assure you there is nothing to worry about,” Becker replied. “There’s not a week that goes by without Libra attacking the Census Archives…” she went on.

  I groaned internally. They were having mostly the same conversation despite my intervention.

  I decided to interrupt, dropping the real bomb, wondering what Alice’s reaction would be.

  “Can you tell me Wesley Slater’s Aetherprint.”

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  “Ae – “ Becker began, then immediately froze, turning silently to Alice as if asking for permission.

  Alice just shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Tell the gentleman what he asked for.”

  So she knew about the Aetherprint. But did she know why Aetheris crystals had unique Aetherprints just like humans?

  “Certainly, Lady Verldson,” Becker said, nodding before typing in the request.

  “You don’t look surprised I know about that,” I said to Alice.

  “You did say you were investigating,” she replied, then narrowed her eyes with curiosity. “How much do you know about the Aetherprint?”

  “How much do you?” I countered with a question of my own.

  “Just the basics,” she said. “That it’s a unique mana-ID every person has—like a fingerprint. Us and all the Aetherises.”

  I nodded once. “You ever wondered why that is? I mean, why us and Aetherises?”

  She gave me a look like I was some crazy conspiracist. “Looks like your investigation didn’t even scrape the surface. There’s centuries-old research explaining that.”

  I smirked. “I thought you only knew the basics.”

  She bit her upper lip—her reaction to getting caught in a lie, I assumed.

  Before I could press her further, Becker spoke up.

  “Wesley Slater’s Aetherprint was: LH-150344.”

  I reached into my jacket, then summoned Mom’s picture from the Inventory, making it look like I’d just taken it from an inner pocket.

  “Pen?” I asked.

  Becker blinked in surprise but handed one over.

  I quickly wrote the sequence on the back of the picture. I had no idea how Dolos’ tampering with the ‘written object’ rule worked, so to be safe, I assumed this picture was just a “broken” item.

  Then, just like before—but this time the other way around—I slipped the picture back into my jacket and sent it to the Inventory.

  [Item Acquired: Friends Picture – Added to Inventory]

  It worked. The System allowed that.

  I turned to Becker again. “Can you search for a Riven Duran next?”

  Becker glanced at Alice again. Alice gave her a small nod. Only then did she start typing.

  “Duran’s the officer from the entrance, right?” Alice whispered to me. “Was he one of the names you wanted to check or are you wasting more time on hunches again?”

  I wasn’t wasting time. At least not my own. But since Vorrick was the one who killed her parents—a truth she will undoubtedly deny no matter what I tell her—I didn’t feel bad wasting hers.

  “I’m not wasting time,” I whispered back. “I told you: he’s connected to this somehow.”

  She drew a slow breath. “Okay. I’ll trust you for now.”

  “Good,” I said. Then another thought hit me. “Does your centuries-old research explain how to read Aetherprint sequences?”

  “Of course,” she said. “For crystals, the numbers depend on the sizes, shapes, and quantity of facets that create a unique sequence. For humans, it’s more complicated. The COG decides that after analyzing blood. And as you probably know, only a select few truly understand how the COG really operates.”

  Not exactly helpful.

  “What about the letters?” I asked.

  “LH stands for Live Human, while RCF is Raw Crystal Form.”

  “And SKO?”

  “That one’s for machines and automatons. It stands for Standardized Kinetic Operator.”

  Interesting…so a human could go from an LH to an RCF when they’re turned into a crystal, and then to an SKO once inserted into an automaton.

  But how does one turn into a crystal? The thought alone sent a chill down my spine.

  “Riven Duran is an Enforcer from Orlinth,” Becker said suddenly. “Would you like his Aetherprint as well?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  She resumed typing as my thoughts raced.

  How had Valdemar and his people managed to crack the COGs? The COG activated only if the person it was assigned to was using it—a blood check confirmed that before every use.

  Wesley Slater had assumed a new identity—Riven Duran—and joined Ironwatch. The fake identity part didn’t sound too difficult to pull off as I assumed that with a high enough bribe, anyone—even the highest-ranking clerk—would break a few rules.

  But Riven had a functioning COG. To use it, he’d need his blood to match the one the COG was calibrated to. If he was still somehow using his own COG, wouldn’t that raise an alarm at House Civics? That a deceased person just came back to life?

  And if Libra had found a way to keep their members’ COGs hidden from House Civics, then why didn’t Valdemar have one?

  Was the reason truly just symbolic? To show he was free from the oligarchs’ chains?

  But that made zero sense from an ideologic standpoint. If he really wanted to prove that claim, Libra as a whole wouldn’t use their COGs.

  No…there was a different reason there.

  “Riven Duran’s Aetherprint is…” Becker said. “LH-534623.”

  A different one. Which meant he was using a different COG. Probably a stolen one—how Valdemar called them in the Memory Fragment with Thea.

  I quickly wrote down this Aetherprint as well, storing the picture in the Inventory again.

  I rubbed my forehead, recalling that Memory Fragment in detail, sinking into thought. Valdemar had said that using Thea’s hair he could fool House Civics’ tracking devices.

  The realization settled.

  There likely was a person called Riven Duran somewhere in Solvane—someone whose identity Libra had either stolen or borrowed. I had no idea how Libra made his COG respond to a different person, but they were probably using his hair or blood to keep his COG active on Riven's arm.

  I wondered how many other fake people there were in Solvane right now.

  “Anything else?” Becker asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, still thinking.

  “What?” Alice asked, dumbfounded. “Viktor, those were definitely not the two names you wanted to check here. What are you not telling me?”

  Damn.

  “What happened to ‘I trust you’?” I asked, trying to gaslight her, feeling terrible for it.

  “I already told you that I don’t trust anyone,” she said firmly. “And you keep giving me more reasons not to trust you with this attitude of yours.”

  “Attitude?” I asked, feigning confusion. “What do you mean, attitude? I told you I was working off a hunch. And I’m not hiding anything. We just need to track this Slater guy now. Perhaps we can split: you interrogate Duran with the Prime, while I – “

  “She just said he’s dead!” Alice snapped. “Why would you go searching for him? Can you be any less obvious with your lies?!”

  Damn it. I still had to work on my lies.

  I shook my head, trying to salvage the situation by lying my ass off. “He’s not dead. And he’s the one behind Libra. I think he’s Valdemar.”

  “What?” Alice and Becker said in unison.

  Just then, we heard the Cogwheel arrive outside.

  “That must be Prime Vorrick arriving early,” Becker said, turning and walking toward the door.

  I turned toward the door, and, suddenly, something snapped around my left arm. I looked down and saw a handcuff. Alice had locked the other end around her wrist.

  When did she even get a pair of those? She surely didn’t have them before—when we met at the orphanage.

  My eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you’re not running away!” she said, anger filling her voice. “I already saw I can’t overpower you. At least with your left arm cuffed to me, you can’t reach your COG. Casten will decide what to do with you now.”

  “But that’s not Casten…” I muttered, slowly realizing the new problem.

  Clad in his Aetherguard Mark II, Riven entered the room, he was about to give me a nod before he noticed the handcuffs.

  Alice’s eyes widened.

  “Captain, has something happened?” Becker asked worriedly.

  He ignored Becker completely, pointing at the handcuffs. “What…is that?”

  “Casten will arrest the both of you now!” Alice shouted, her eyes turning teary.

  “Huh,” Riven said simply. Then his smile widened, surprising her. “I am so glad to see him again after so long.”

  Seeing how things turned out, I knew the only way out was forward even if it meant risking being marked.

  “Idiot,” I said, shaking my head. “With or without a suit, he’ll wipe the floor with you.”

  Riven’s smile wavered, eyes narrowing. “Is that an assumption or…?”

  “I’ve seen it happen,” I said.

  “Damn it!” He turned and punched the wall—exoskeleton's pistons hissing—breaking a hole through it. “Then I’m still not ready. Fuck!”

  He turned back to us, growing just slightly nervous. “Did you see the note? Did you try loading an Aetheris – “

  “Yes,” I cut him off. “Get me to Valdemar. I know the truth now. I want to help him.”

  Riven expression shifted between relief and worry as he looked at the cuffs. “But she – “

  “Then take us both before Vorrick arrives and kills us all!” I snapped.