Ember swallowed. “Okay, I know you don’t like loud noises and everything, but Cheyenne, I swear, if that thing starts moving on its own, I’m gonna scream.”
“Really?” The halfling turned her frown on her friend. “Never pegged you as a screamer.”
The fae cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or if that was a poorly timed innuendo.”
Cheyenne shrugged and glanced at her phone. “Whatever.”
“Who are you calling?”
“Corian.” She pulled up his number and hovered her thumb over the call icon.
“You think he could help us with our creepy-neighbor problem?”
“Oh, now you think he’s creepy.”
Ember glanced at the door and lowered her voice despite the loud bass thumping from across the hall and the constant drone of voices and outbreaks of laughter. “Yeah. You finally got me to see things your way, and I don’t think I can unsee them.”
“Corian would help if I asked him.”
“Great.”
“But I’m not gonna ask him.”
Ember groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“Hey, not until I look into what Matthew Thomas might or might not have done in here. If I can take care of it myself, I will. So for now, we’ll just keep the door locked, and it’s all good.”
Blinking furiously, the fae wheeled herself toward the front door and turned the chair sideways so she could flip the knob lock and reach the deadbolt. “Honestly, Cheyenne, figuring out if someone bugged my apartment would be number one on my priority list.”
“Well, we do have our differences.” Cheyenne forced herself to make the call and lifted the phone to her ear. “This is a little more important right now.”
“What is?”
“That damn leg.” The halfling glanced at her friend and raised her eyebrows. “I’ve seen something like that before. I’m pretty sure I fought my first O’gúl war machine at Peridosh tonight.”
“Your first what?”
“Yeah.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Corian’s low voice came in scratchier than normal over the phone. “What’s up, kid?”
“Oh, you know, just a regular Tuesday night. Pretty chill. Having fun.”
A long pause greeted her in response. “What happened?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m wondering.”
The nightstalker said, “Look, we’re in the middle of decoding some shit I can’t pretend to understand.”
“We?” Persh’al added in the background. “Uh-uh. I’m decoding, man. You’re just breathing down my neck.”
“Ain’t that what supervisors are for?” Byrd shouted from the other side of the warehouse.
Corian’s thick swallow and slow, irritated exhalation came through loud and clear. “Obviously, I don’t have time for games, Cheyenne. And I’m not in the mood.”
“Right. Because you caught the guy who figured out how to make the other-side tech work over here, and now you’re diligently trying to keep that knowledge out of anyone else’s hands. Does that sum it up?”
“Yeah, just about.”
“Good. So maybe you can tell me why an assembled piece of that machinery tunneled all the way under Union Hill and crashed a pretty big underground party. If you catch my drift.” Cheyenne pulled one leg up onto the recliner and rested her elbow on her knee, propping her phone against her ear.
Corian’s pause was even longer this time. “What?”
“I know you heard me.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not. I’m staring at a leftover piece of it lying on my couch right now. Took some parts with me. You know, in case it helps you guys figure out where you went wrong. Because this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“No, it was not.” Corian pulled the phone away from his mouth as he said it.
Oh, yeah. I can see him shooting Persh’al the evil eye.
“Tell me what happened.”
Cheyenne said, “The thing came out of nowhere, man. Or it came from underground. Really loud digger, but I couldn’t pin it down until it popped out in the middle of a fun little shopping center and started throwing things around.”
“What did it want?”
“Seriously?” She couldn’t help but laugh. “I really hope these machines don’t want anything.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I have no idea why it was there, okay? But my best guess is it got a jump start on the others and came looking for me, seeing as all the living beings with brains and normal bodily functions have failed so far.”
“That might be the case. You say you brought back some parts?”
Cheyenne eyed the black metal leg and nodded. “Yeah. After I buried that thing in the middle of the tunnel.”
“What? You engaged it?”
“Hey, it engaged me. And everyone else down there. I wasn’t about to let it tear the place apart.”
“Cheyenne, did you attack it with your personal weapons?”
“We’re still talking in code, right?”
“Answer the question!”
She pulled the phone away from her ear and frowned at it. “Yeah. That’s pretty much my go-to reaction. Something drops out of the wall and comes running at me, I’m gonna get it with fire first. I mean, not that fire.”
“But you made direct contact.”
“That’s what I said. Then it turned on me, and I had to improvise.”
“Shit.” Corian’s phone clattered against a hard surface, and Persh’al’s voice came through closer than before.
“What’s going on?”
“Put that thing on speaker, will you?”
“Uh, yep.” There was a tap, then the blue troll’s steady breathing came through loud and clear. “You’re on speaker, kid.”
Cheyenne frowned at the black metal leg on her couch. “What’s going on?”
“If you’d buried that thing using nothing but earth, Cheyenne,” Corian called from some distance away, “we wouldn’t have this problem. But a direct attack means that thing’s operating system, more or less, got a lock on your signature. That was the one thing they didn’t have.”
“Christ.” The halfling rolled her eyes and glanced at Ember, who widened her eyes in a silent request for an explanation. Cheyenne shook her head and lifted a finger. “So, what do we do?”
“I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”
“At home. My apartment. Just don’t show up in Ember’s bedroom or anything, okay?”
“Is that where
