Chapter 13 Four days

He used all four of them.

The first day he spent in the Underbelly.

Two weeks ago Mira had given him access through the eastern tunnel gate, but this time with a capacity card, one that was a standing authorization, not a single entry pass, which came with the right information broker, at the right time, and the right relationship. But the value of the Underbelly as a single area for accumulation has been dependent on a number of factors: high-ranked output, enclosed space, some ambient bleed, and being close enough to make the trip worthwhile..All those factors converged in this case and he hadn't managed to get them right on his schedule until now.

In the early hours of the evening, he sneaked up while the tunnel was functioning at its peak and found himself lying on the sidelines not that far from the ring and not so far from the top-ranked fighters in the ring at the time to get the passive bleed at a good volume. He remained for three hours. He shifted position twice and tracked the fights the way he tracked everything, with the smidgen of attention that someone with an awareness of how power works bestowed upon the information.

The inflow to the reservoir for the three hours was not the grand flood of Knox's full discharge. It was a stream of a high density, the dozens of Awakened talents at varying levels of exertion in one contained area, Nothing remarkable moment to moment, but it added up.

He exited the Underbelly at midnight and walked back to Cael Street when he got inside he sat on the cot and assessed.

The reservoir was higher than this morning. Not dramatically. Measurably. The third time he pressed the palm of his hand against the wall above the cot and pushed at 30 percent of what he thought his return capacity was at then, leaving an impression in the plaster deeper than the previous test mark, but not enough to measure.

He wrote the number down and went to sleep.

The second day he spent with Knox.

Not in Knox's territory. It was morning and Knox arrived at the room on Cael Street sitting on the crate that had been installed as the room's second seat, and fixed his amber eyes at Ethan and said without preamble: "One of my people is reporting to the council.”

Ethan stared at him. "You found out."

“My network had found out; I have people that watch my people, that's how a district would be operated for 10 years without being taken from behind.” Knox's voice was even, but it was like a blanket over something hot. “The report was submitted three days ago, and included your location in my eastern territory and the Tower Four access pattern, which implies that those who made the report knew about both of them—and therefore they have been monitoring both for more than three days.”

"Yes," Ethan said.

Knox gazed at him with a dark, penetrating stare. "You knew."

“I was going to tell you when Solen confirms the name.”

“Does he have a name?”

"Not yet. Today."

This was absorbed by the stillness that covered the hot thing underneath. He said “The mandatory service program. The advocate who's filed nothing on Davin's release applications.”

Ethan said the council has been shutting the channels down on purpose. “Davin is leveraged, the informant is to check to see if that leverage is still there.”

The room was quite still.

Knox studied the wall behind Ethan's head for a long time. Not blankly. The particular focus of a man holding something very tightly, to prevent it from becoming something that he will not be able to take back. Ethan watched him hold it and said nothing, knowing that this was no time for talking, and that the noontide Knox was not one who was going to be hurried.

“So how long has Davin been in the service program?” Knox asked finally.

"Three years."

“I've been trying to get him out for two.”

“Yes, the first year of his service was before you took your turn and the leverage was set up before you knew it.” Ethan paused. “They set it up before they needed it, which means that they watched your operation long enough to know what was important to you before they moved.”

Knox was silent for a while longer. Then: "The informant."

“Before I tell anybody else, I will bring this to you personally once solen confirms a name” Ethan fixed his eyes on it. “That's up to you after that; I'm not going to tell you how to run your network.”

There was something in Knox's face—more than gratitude, something more lasting. The recognition of a man who has been managed by all who know him for so long that to be confronted with one who does not attempt to manage him is a notable event.

"It's the challenge,” Knox said. “I was told about Tower Four by the Underbelly contacts.”

“Today is the day. Four days, like i told you”

"You are ready?"

Ethan said, "I am going to find out.”

Knox stood and went to the door and stopped. “If it fails,” he said, “I would like to see the melee. If the challenge gets the Authority to Tower Four before you move.”

“Then the time shortens again, and we tweak,” Ethan said. “There's no version of this without risk”

Knox looked at him. After that, he nodded his head once and walked away.

Solen came in the afternoon with the name.

“The council's eyes in the network were a man in Knox's eastern logistics operation named Ferro, who had served for three years.” Ethan took and sat with it till the evening and went to Knox and gave it to him and watched him take it, the stillness of a man who had previously determined what he was going to do and now only needed the final confirmation.

He didn't ask what knox did with Ferro after that. He didn't have to read it and Knox wouldn't have asked about it.

He spent the third day reading.

Mira had given him all she had on Cass Amir, the complete profile derived from challenge records and ability documentation, and the behavior patterns of a fighter who hadn't been defeated in 14 months. He read it twice and put it down and read the entries in the development log from Davel Oris's file and cross checked with the reservoir accumulation levels and where he thought the reservoir was.

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible.

He pressed his palm against the wall three times during the day at regular intervals and recorded the output that returned and compared it to the return output from the previous day, which was also tested. The course was unerring. The nature of passive accumulation was as the Underbelly session had contributed more than the individual increment had felt like at the time, it was only when compared to a baseline that the full contribution of the Underbelly session was revealed.

He ate. He slept eight hours purposefully as if a machine requiring attention before it takes too much strain.

On the fourth day he lay down quietly.

Not idle. The quietness of a man who has prepared, of one who has gone so far that further preparation is unprofitable, is stillness, but not idleness. He lay on the cot and thought of nothing operational till the morning. He remembered his sister. He was thinking about the alley, and the streetlight swinging, and the coolness of concrete, which he could feel, even when he was trying not to. He remembered the forty three dollars and the broken phone and the man that hadn't run and the grey sidewalk in Veran City and whatever ended up behind his sternum and no idea what either of them was, and the rest of his thoughts disconnected from that.

Five weeks ago.

He was dead five weeks ago, and now he sat in a room in the Gray Warrens with a reservoir behind his sternum that had sucked in his entire B-rank discharge and was steadily continuing its development and a partnership with an information broker and a district operator and a Tower Authority enforcer and a structural map of the council that ran the city and a target that had been at work without challenge for long before he came.

He was not ready, per se. He didn't know positively what he was doing. He was ready in the one sense that matters – he had done what he could in the time available and the time was up.

He put the coat on.

He walked to Tower Four.

The lobby was even busier than the gallery sessions, the energy of a crowd that came specifically to watch, not to wander as another part of their day. He walked through them and got on the elevator to the tenth floor, and he stepped out into the open plan challenge space, the high ceilinged, the tiered observation, and the four Authority officers and the maybe eighty people who were about to be witness to something that, none of them, had any framework for.

He discovered a spot in the standing area, and waited.

It was eight fifty when Amir got there. Effortless, relaxed, free-flowing, the gift of locomotion that had long since become a part of his life's movements, so natural that it no longer needed to be summoned. He glanced at the challenge ground. He didn't checked the gallery.

Amir’s opponent went through the Tower protocol, and the match started and Ethan watched it at one level and took in the passive bleed of C-rank force amplification at forty percent and then sixty percent and then ninety percent in a closed space, where the accumulation of that happened in increments that weren't small, arrived in the reservoir.

When the floor had cleared, Ethan's hands were completely still when Amir's opponent finally conceded.

He came down from the gallery.

He went to the challenge floor by walking.

The floor staff noticed the gray band, and when the pause displayed, Ethan used the Access Code gap the way he planned to use it, and the floor staff looked at Amir and Amir looked at the gray band and at Ethan's face and said, easily, as if it was no cost to him at all: "I will take it.

Ethan walked to the middle of the floor.

He stood at the mark, levelled at the distance to Cass Amir who was taking his jacket off with the unconcern of a man who didn't need to worry about the outcome and breathed evenly, and thought nothing about anything other than what was about to come and what he would do with it as the reservoir sat solid and deep behind his sternum.

Amir peeped at him from afar. It was only for that one second, but the seriousness of his gaze grew more focused.

He couldn't miss the fact there was something that was off. He didn't know what it was.

He was about to find out.

The floor staff gave a signal for the start.