“Everyone but us will die. You must let them go and focus on your dutynow.”
“My duty? How dare you. All I’ve wanted to do this entire time is have a duty, a purpose, and contribute,” shespat.
“Which you would’ve been able to do, had you beenhere.”
Jo stilled as Snow spoke, her chest heaving and shoulders pulling against Wayne’s hands. “What are you talkingabout?
“It was Pan’s idea, actually,” Eslar chimed in, likely the only person who could speak without being silenced by Snow. “I was experiencing difficulty lessening the Severity of Exchange on my own. I can cure the illness. But these doctors, they look to science, not magic. Something that cannot be explained is daunting, terrifying even. If the patient was cured magically, it would be written off as a miracle or anomaly, and the gap would not close enough for Snow to build a new reality and grant thewish.”
“I caught wind.” It was Pan’s turn to speak. “I remembered all your tapping away, such fantastic magic you had. I thought it could be of help, modify all that science data in someway, perhaps? A foundation for Eslar’s cure?” Pan’s words and tone were in dissonance. She spoke as if she didn’t know anything, but her overall aura said otherwise. “But I didn’t know where to find you, so I began askingaround.”
Pan had outed her after all. Jo’s hands balled into a fist. She wouldn’t have actually punched the woman-child (as tempting as it may be), but she must’ve had a convincing enough expression for Wayne to think so, because he grabbed her wrist and whispered, “Don’t.”
“That was when we learned of what you did.” All eyes were back on Snow, includingJo’s.
“Yes, okay, I made a small modification. I made it so that my friend wouldn’t fail and die. I’m notsorry.”
“Because you do notunderstand.”
There was a sharp intake of air from Wayne, who’d clearly put together something she couldn’t yet see. “The Severity ofExchange.”
Snow gave the other man a solemn nod. “You have widened the Severity of Exchange with youractions.”
“That’s not possible.” Jo shook her head. “I was careful, I didn’t even do all thatmuch—”
“You saw that the most extensive cyber-currency bank collapsed, sending markets and businesses into free-fall.”
“No, Yuu shouldn’t haveeven—”
“This is not your world!” Snow’s voice rose a fraction. “People are different, time-lines are different, even what looks similar is not the same. Understand that, Josephina.” He used her full name, like she was some toddler who’d spoken out ofturn.
“He did it then?” Somewhere between her implanting the virus, and coming back, Yuusuke must’ve hit the bank with his first probing attack. Had he really moved so quickly? She’d done her job a little too well—or Snow was right, and everything was just. . .different.
“But the wish is only one man,” she protested weakly. Even if she had a lot to feel guilty about, she still didn’t see how it related to thewish.
“One man who had most of his savings incredits.”
Her heartbeat was in her ears. “But. . . he has insurance. He’s in Canada, after all. They have to take care of him there. It’s part of the People’s Promise of the late 1990s.” Jo remembered reading about it once in a class that covered the health crisis happening in old America at the sametime.
“He was paying extra for a research hospital. A hospital he can no longer afford out-of-pocket. He will be transferred within the week to standard care, where he will die, far from the nurse who made thewish.”
“You don’t know that,” she objected on instinct. It was unfathomable how large the ripples had become: she’d only meant to help Yuusuke take down the BlackBank.
“But I do. I can see it in the Severity ofExchange.”
Jo hung her head, searching for options. She took a breath and straightened her back. “Okay, I messed up, I’m sorry.” No one seemed to have any interest in her apology. Not that she blamed them, of course. “But I’ll fix it.” She looked to Eslar, hoping he’d save her from the grave-shaped hole she’d dug without knowing. “I can fix it. We just have to make the wish happen before he’s transferred,right?”
“That’s only three days from now,” Eslar saiduncertainly.
“Plenty of time!” Jo may have sold her reassurance a little too hard. Her laugh was strained and thin. “Really, plenty. If I can take down the Black Bank in less than a week with my magic, I can falsify some hospital and research records. It’ll be simple, I’lljust—”
“How much time do you have left?” Snow interrupted heragain.
Jo looked down at her watch, and her heart sank. “Just over anhour. . .”
“Notenough.”
“I promise you, it is.” She fished around in her pocket for the USB and pulled it out, showing it to everyone. “I can code here, and use this to bring my scripts to the real world. I just have to hit ‘run’ and make sure nothing goes wrong. It worked for the Black Bank and it’d work for this. You told me to learn my magic, so I did, and this is how I can use itbest.”
