In the dark and dust of the unfinished hospital room, Moth fell heavily into a corner and slumped to the floor. So far, he had been nearly struck by lightning, picked up and thrown into a crowded trolley, attacked by things out of his childhood nightmares, forced down a narrow, pitch black hallway inside the Wall itself, and finally trapped in a room with a bunch of strangers who were talking about arming themselves and gallivanting off to save the city. He didn't even have breakfast yet. Moth moaned to himself and covered his face with his hands.
Coherent thought had been lost to him over the past hour or so, and as his mind worked to catch up, he thought back to the trolley. A massive claw punctured the roof and tore a hole in it. People screamed and the Grit tried pushing their way in, spittle flying from their gaping snouts and fangs shining like black metal blades. Moth had looked up, and could see others behind them on the roof, and more coming down the wires above. One of them locked eyes with him. It was all black and flowing, like smoke beneath the dark waters of his subconscious. It was small, and shaped like a human, and the only features Moth could make out were its shining, pink-gold eyes. Stunned, Moth slowly stretched a hand out to it, and then the other people in the trolley reacted and the Grit were gone. Moth knew what it was. Who it was. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.
It was me.
His mind continued to spin, there in the dust of the abandoned medical ward, as people around him continued to move and plan.
An eye peeked through his fingers as realization hit him. The digital Network was almost certainly down with the loss of electricity in the city, but his suit was connected by a WideBand receiver to the main office. If he could reach someone at CMYB, they could pass word up to the accounting partners themselves. The four partners held so much power in Periphery City that the entire damn military would be at their command! His fingers flew across a keyboard on one arm, the amber light a welcome warmth against his face. He pulled up the data settings and...nothing. Connection Not Found. That was impossible.
A WideBand connection was simply a stretch of the theoretical Ether that all magic passed through, with a portal on either end. Once created, the portals would be connected to one another forever, with no magic needed to hold them open. Only an electronic receiver locked to the right frequency was needed to reach it. Receivers could be anything from simple TechSpecs and handhelds to something as complicated and rare and highly illegal as a full-body biological-neural-wetlink. If the WideBand was out of reach, which Moth still thought of as impossible, then anyone with a neural link to it...
Best scenario, they'd be dead. If someone with that much of a connection still lived, they would be brain-fried, or comatose, or...psychotic. At least one of the partners was rumored to have some less-than-legal biotech. Moth shuddered. So much was going on that he didn't understand and didn't want to understand. He was hungry, and exhausted, and his head was starting to hurt, and...
"I need to pee."
A moment passed before Moth realized he said it out loud. The talking had stopped, and in the silence Moth could feel himself turning red.
