“I guess we’ll see when—if—it’s ever used for awish.”
“You’re still bent about that?” Wayne stuffed his hands into his pockets, clearly trying to assess how deep her bitternessran.
Jo didn’t bury the lede. “Yes and no,” she confessed. “I get it, Snow wants me to learn my magic and become comfortable before I’m placed in the line of fire. Walk before you run, and all that. It’s not like I haven’t had to prove myself before.” Jo looked down into the darkness. “But that’s just it. My whole life I’ve been proving myself. Just when I thought I’d finally cracked through, Idied.”
She glanced over at him. Wayne hadn’t moved, and his face was surprisingly expressionless. For the first time, she was left wondering what he might bethinking.
“I don’t know if you can understand. . . But I’ve always been working toward something—for my mother, Yuusuke, for myself. To now be the bottom rungandhave nothing to do? It’s a bitterbill.”
Wayne rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said, finally, “Good thing you didn’t have anything to do.” Jo raised her eyebrows and Wayne motioned toward the darkness. “If you were on the wish you wouldn’t be able to help yourfriend.”
Jo narrowed her eyes at him. “Damn your logic,sir.”
Wayne looked down at her, head cocked to the side. A rogue piece of hair had escaped its usual slicked-back perfection and hung with the movement. He leaned forward. “I know, I’m heinous, aren’tI?”
Jo was glad he stepped away promptly, or she may have objected to theidea.
“Now, let’s get to that BlackBank.”
She faced off against the opening to the catacombs and ignored her insides firing with such ferocity that she was surprised she hadn’t short-circuited yet. “Will we be able to see?” Jo askeduncertainly.
“Remember, we’re not human anymore, not quite.” Wayne placed an encouraging hand at the small of her back. “We need no feast and fear no famine. We are the embracers of dreams and the vagrants of sleep. Andwe—”
“We fear no hour, for none shall be our last,” Jouttered.
From the corners of her eyes, Jo could see Wayne staring at her. “How did you know that?” he asked, barely more than awhisper.
“Something I remembered my grandmother reading to me when I was little,” Joconfessed.
Behold, the giver of wishes, Abuelita had read from an old, dusty tome, her voice worn with age and tinged in an accent that meant family and home. She remembered her eyes, crinkling at the corners as she glanced up from the page.They are the changer of worlds, mijita, and you are destined for greatness because you are of theirblood.
“Aboutwhat?”
“I think it was about you.” The details of the book and the passages within were still vague, ethereal, on the tip of her tongue but not quite enough to get a taste. But she did know that much. She looked up at Wayne, feeling a heavy weight settling over her shoulders. “Well. . . us, Iguess.”
Jo looked forward once more and stepped into the darkness before he could ask further. Old habits died hard, and somewhere Jo waited for her father to scold her for “buying into all this magicnonsense.”
She strode into the maze of stone, a hand running along the wall, fingers streaking lines in the dampness. Wayne was beside her, but wasn’t touching her. He hovered, a warm presence in the chilling blackness that somehow her eyes did not struggle topierce.
She knew exactly where to go, the careful map of the catacombs that she’d memorized hovering in the forefront of her mind. It led her with ease, deeper and deeper inside. Eventually, Jo felt a buzz in the air around her—a thrumming that was both familiar and unusual in the ancient and gloomyatmosphere.
It was the distinct feeling of electric current, noticeable in the otherwise void blackness. Or, perhaps it was her magic, or being outside time, that made it soprominent.
“Through here.” She motioned for Wayne to follow, confidence leading her down one more tunnel and towards a heavy-looking door. Wayne wasted no time turning on his watch, allowing her to save more of her minutes for what was to come. Jo gave him a nod as he heaved the lock, disengaged the carefully insulated door, and pushed itopen.
The Black Bank’s mainframe was expectedly massive, towers of server racks lining the perimeter of a room that was suddenly all too modern for its surroundings. All the bells and whistles had obviously gone into this set up, and she had no doubt that there were protections, even from the inside. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t up for thetask.
Jo went to one of the two monitors on either side of the room, simple command centers no doubt used for little more than diagnostics. The first did not have a USB port, but the second did. Turning on her time and taking a seat, Jo plugged in her drive and began uploading. The moment her codes were uploaded, the scripts beganworking.
She could pull out of time, likelyshouldpull out of time. It was mostly automated from here. But Jo couldn’t bring herself to tap her watch, not when she was this close. If something went wrong, just the slightest line of code out of place, she wanted to beready.
But so far, so good. The script ran like a dream and Jo watched as it began to attach itself to the underbelly of the Black Bank. It was a little worm under the rug, put in a place where only Yuusuke was likely to find it—and he wouldn’t even realize hehad.
By the time she felt content in her job—probably only a few more tweaks here and there to make sure the virus killed itself on activation—she still had an hourleft.
“Looks like your time is up, dollface,” Wayne said, aiming for casual but missing the mark. When she looked over her shoulder at him, he was peeking past the door and back out into the tunnels, a look of concern on hisface.
“I’m not done yet,” Jo snapped, suddenly feeling as though everything she had done wouldn’t be enough. She only had this one chance, this one accumulation of time to spend. If she didn’t get the right amount of encryptions uploaded, if she didn’t open enough back doors, then her wish would mean nothing. Yuusuke would wind up right back where they’d started. . .ended.
