Chapter Six

1 What had happened to the two minutes Illura was supposed to have after connecting the data key to the computer port? Didn't matter. No turning back now. Only seconds. Holding her breath and ignoring her thumping heart (and shaky hands) she gave the command to upload all the information on the key to the public network, hit the button that'd dissolve the damn thing into the port's liquid geo system with the knuckle of her thumb, and practically dived into the small alley between the two office buildings the port was flanked by. She didn't run, didn't walk too slowly, didn't look back. A siren approached. Running steps. Searching blue lights of a scout patrol on the pale amber sky. Oh, no. She needed to keep walking keep walking not look up into any camera be recognised.

She needed to get somewhere safe before the Security Patrol goons, or worse, the Warrior Guild took a good look at the footage recorded at the computer port. Zig-zagging through the narrow alleys between office buildings and small manufactories, she found a public square with a tram station. Good! She just needed to gain distance between herself and the computer port, buy some time, get away from the public eye…

…go home.

The powers that be would find her. They'd have her by the end of the day, probably. She'd be caught. Her only hope was that her family might be willing to defy their conditioning and shelter her until then.

Yeah, she didn't put much stock in that. However, there were pretty sophisticated computers at her family's home – computers she could maybe use to wreak even more havoc before she was dragged to Tryon Hill for questioning.

Coughing, shaky, and doing her best not to look up and give the security cameras anything to identify her by, she tottered onto the tram and started her trek to the upper levels.


2 The stolen data had been accessed at a computer port on Kandor's ground level, where hardly any of the higher-ups ever went. That was the only thing Faora knew as she read the data coming in at the terminal in Zod's office, minutes after the fact. What kind of idiot would conspire with a Tryon Hill employee, hack the database, and then try to read it at a minimum security public computer port? That made no sense. The theft had been too clever for this kind of approach, too…

…unless…unless…

Oh, no.

She bolted upright and stared at Zod, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion at the exact same moment.

His eyes narrowed. He punched a control at the console, accessing the public newsfeed that, true to its name, the whole of Krypton could view and download from.

It was all there.

Names, deployments, weapon schematics, operation details, and, worst of all, the plans for the Warrior Guild to turn the Security Patrol from a civilian organisation into a military one. This had to be approved by the Law Council, in the end, but the bill was ready to be introduced, and moves had been made to sway key councillors. These plans were, as of yet, top secret, and very much not meant for public consumption. They weren't even meant to be revealed to the whole of the Council before everything had been more or less arranged.

Now, everybody knew. The leaked information was being downloaded by the millions per minute.

Zod punched another control, calling up tech maintenance. "Shut it all down! The newsfeed, the computer ports, civilian communication!"

The voice that responded belonged to Captain Kal-Linn, estranged brother of a known Rao cultist and dissident, Illura Dom-Linn: "That's gonna take a while, sir."

"Make it as quick as you can. Start with the newsfeed."

"Yes, sir."

He cut the connection, closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and took a deep breath. When he looked at Faora again, he was having visible trouble keeping his ire in check. "It doesn't even matter. The damage has been done. We need to find that traitor, Faora – now."

She clasped her hands behind her back and returned his look calmly, even though keeping her composure was hard at a moment like this. "The Law Council will object to every measure we take, including the communications shut-down."

All the muscles tightened in his face. "I don't care. They're a bunch of fools who'll die debating every little issue while civilisation falls apart all around them. No, it's up to us to repair the damage these terrorists have done to Krypton. We're gonna catch them and we're gonna make sure that none of this ever happens again. I don't care what it takes, or what drastic measures become necessary. We'll be victorious, and they will fail; I promise you that."

It was hard to describe the effect those words had on her. She wanted to grin and break something and suck in a sharp breath as if she'd jumped into the icy ocean. She wanted to just give an outlet to the overwhelming sensation of pride drowning out everything else. Instead, she just curved up the corners of her mouth in a subtle little smile and nodded almost imperceptibly. "I hear you, sir," she said, the tiniest tremor colouring her tone. "They don't stand a chance against us."


3 Kalan, Dom, Ro, and Mal were standing in the middle of the formers' living area, staring in abject horror at the big view screen, trying to make sense of the unimaginable: someone had uploaded all the stolen data onto the public newsfeed. It was all there: everything. Whoever the thief had been, they'd been astonishingly good at hacking. Numbers indicated that the information was being downloaded by the millions all over the planet. Millions of civilians were reading through highly classified intel, were sharing it, were commenting on it.

Then, from one second to the next, the screen went black. There was nothing. Everyone present checked their comms.

"I'm only getting governmental frequencies," Dom said, his voice quiet and strangely subdued.

"Same here." That was his brother.

Kalan and Ro only exchanged a look.

Ro's face was ghostly pale except for reddish blotches high up on her cheekbones. Her eyes were huge. "What were they thinking?" she whispered. Everyone looked at her. As if she were suddenly dizzy, she robotically walked over to the nearest settee and dropped herself on it, still clutching her comm unit. "This isn't right. This puts the entire planet in danger."

Acid sloshed in Kalan's stomach. She felt cold all over. Forcing herself to snap out of it and move her body to sit next to her sister, she said, "Tell me you had nothing to do with this."

A heavy silence fell.

After a moment, Ro stared at her sister as if Kalan had grown a second head. "Are you insane? How can you even ask me that?"

Kalan, though, being nine years Ro's senior, wasn't impressed by the transparent attempt at deflection. "Please just answer the question."

"I had nothing to do with this, Kalan," Ro said lowly, her voice shaking. Her eyes were brimming with tears. Her face contorted into a mask of pure rage. She pressed her lips together, shut her eyes, balled her hands into fists, and took a few deep, tremulous breaths. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She sniffled.

Dom tried to exchange a look with his brother, who crossed his arms and stared down at his black boots.

Carefully, Kalan reached out and covered her sister's right fist with her left hand. Ro's skin was icy. "I'm sorry if you feel attacked by the question, but your reaction-"

"My reaction is what?" Ro cut in sharply, mopping at her eyes with her free hand. "Suspicious? You really think I'm a traitor to the state?" She looked away again, then made herself face Dom with obvious reluctance. "You think so, too?"

Crossing his arms and frowning, Dom said, "Now, hold on a minute. Kalan never said she suspected you of anything, and I said nothing at all. Why are you being this defensive?"

"Why am I being this defensive? Maybe because I'm the only one who's being asked to explain herself."

"Your reaction was a little extreme," Dom said, making a noticeable effort to sound friendly. It made Kalan want to hug him.

Ro wasn't impressed. She glowered at him, then Kalan, saying, "That's not it, at least not all of it. You're thinking about the fact that I'm under observation and that Mal is under observation. You've been infected by the Warrior Guild's paranoia, and now, you're suspecting those closest to you of committing high treason. That's what's wrong, here, and that's why I'm overreacting. How hard is that to understand?"

"Let's also not forget the fact," Mal threw in cheerily, "that Dom and Kalan are under suspicion, too. Maybe they're just trying to deflect."

Ro glared at him, as well. "Funny."

Kalan made herself take a mental step back and think. Ro did have a point. They were getting paranoid, weren't they? Sure, Ro's behaviour was a little too intense, and she had been pretty fidgety as of late, but all of that could be explained away if one recalled how overworked she was, how stressed out and sleep-deprived.

It could be something else entirely, as well.

Ah, doubts. Doubt were like ideas, and ideas were like viruses. Once they were given opportunity to spread, it was very hard – if not impossible – to get rid of them again. What was this situation doing to them? What was fear doing to them?

Was Kalan really so scared of watching the order she believed in so firmly crumble that she'd started to see enemies of the state everywhere? Was she willing to suspect her own sister for no good reason? Maybe the question she should be asking herself, instead, was this: if Ro really had done something bad, would Kalan tell on her? After all, matters of planetary security were at stake, here. But this was her beloved little sister. Kalan remembered the day her parents had brought the baby home, fresh from the genesis chamber she'd been grown in, and had placed the tiny bundle in her big sister's spindly arms. Ro had been so tiny, so chubby, so adorable, Kalan had had trouble containing the immediate onslaught of affection that had drowned out everything else inside her. Ro was her sister, her family. She was the baby. Nothing must ever happen to the baby.

Now, they were sitting in this room Kalan loved so much, suspecting each other of being traitors. It was enough to make her wish she could crawl back into her own genesis pod and just shut out the world.


4 Lara and Cam were still at the temple when the security crackdown happened. The soldiers in charge of watching over them wouldn't tell them anything useful, and there was no calling anyone or even accessing the newsfeed. Everything was just dead. There were no planetary communications at all, except for governmental frequencies. Lara was a government employee just as much as Jor, but the officer in charge of guarding her told her that no private calls were allowed, and that the frequency was only open in case of emergency orders. Therefore, both artisans had no choice but to wait until they were allowed to leave. There was no going back to work, either, since the order apparently had come in that everything should come to a screeching halt.

As she stood in the temple's main nave – posture straight, arms crossed, and chin jutted out – she wondered what the cause of all this might be. It wasn't too hard to guess that it had something to do with the Tryon Hill incident, but what exactly could have happened to warrant a complete shutdown of planet-wide communications? The only conclusion that seemed viable to her was that the person in possession of the stolen data had made it public somehow.

Her thoughts wandered to the Insider, and Lara had to pour considerable effort into keeping her expression level and her body-language inconspicuous. The Insider had told her that no-one was to be harmed, that the information was supposed to be used for leverage. Either they had lied to Lara, or the person who'd done the actual stealing had veered dramatically off-script. Whatever might be the case, this plan had been derailed and now, the authorities were panicking – probably for good reason.

Still, she didn't think she'd simply betray the Insider's identity without mulling the issue over thoroughly. The Warrior Guild would find the Insider, anyway, but Lara didn't feel particularly inclined to be a part of condemning someone to the Phantom Zone for any but the most drastic reasons. That didn't mean she would protect the Insider at all costs. No, she'd find out the truth, do her best to control the damage, and then she'd decide what to do with the information she had.

"It's sad, isn't it?" Cam-Larr's voice dragged her out of her gloomy ruminations rather abruptly.

Blinking, she turned to face him. "Do you mean anything in particular, or just the overall situation?"

He snorted a wry, humourless little chuckle, chewed on his lower lip, and shook his head. "I mean this. This discovery? It should've been the beginning of something wonderful. I thought it would help connect our current society with the past, help us find ways of understanding ourselves better through art and beauty. But what happened? Everything got catalogued and shipped away. Now, we're apparently under martial law."

"That's a consequence of a terrorist attack, not of finding the temple," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"Is it?" He squinted up at her. "Is it, really? You don't see the connection? The military has been sneaking into both public and private spheres unhindered for a long time, now, aided and abetted by the Law Council, who use the soldiers and SP goons as their henchmen for taking control over everything we do. The moment something comes up that doesn't fit the mould, it gets quarantined and whisked away and hidden. The moment someone dares to think differently, they get labelled a dissident, and they disappear, as well. Whether it's remnants of our religious past or data leakages or just diverging thoughts, the response is always the same. It's just the intensity that keeps getting upped." He motioned at the officer standing right next to them with a curt nod, whilst the officer just watched him in stony silence. "I might even get into trouble for simply not agreeing with how everything is handled these days. It doesn't even matter. What matters is that our government is stagnant and that the military has been growing in strength and enforcing their own interpretation of our laws practically unhindered."

Lara let his words sink in for a moment. Until now, all she'd criticised had been the lack of choice her people had in basically every single decision, but Cam had a point. The escalating discord between Jor and Zod came to mind. Both believed that the Law Council were an ineffectual bunch who took forever to make any decision and who always pursued their own interests rather than Krypton's. However, Jor was a pacifist who believed in freedom of choice. Zod didn't disagree with the Council's laws. He just thought that the execution was badly handled and that the Council wasn't strong enough to protect Krypton. Come to think about it, the measures implemented by the Warrior Guild had been escalating. Maybe that was the reason Lara had almost immediately taken the Insider's side in this whole debacle. She didn't approve of the iron fist approach advocated by people such as Zod and his most trusted lieutenant.

"Let's all just stay calm and not point fingers," she said calmly, wishing to defuse the situation before poor Cam talked himself into an arrest. "I know you're upset; we all are. But we need to stay focussed and not panic. As members of the Artisan Guild, we are public servants, and we have a representative function. The people will look to us for guidance. It will not do to lose control over our emotions."

He just stared at her for a moment, before rubbing his eyes, exhaling sharply, dropping his hands to his sides, and nodding. After exchanging a quick look with the officer, who was frowning a little, he told her, "You're right, of course. Forgive my outburst."

She put on her public smile. "Not at all. It's quite understandable." Her thoughts, however, were racing. She needed to get home. She needed to talk to her husband and tell him everything she knew. She needed him to understand that she suspected his old friend might come to the conclusion that a military coup could just be what Krypton needed right now in these trying times.


5 Surprisingly enough, Illura made it to the family estate on Irrek Hill. This was the illustrious mount that bore the Citadel, home of the even more illustrious House of El, on its peak. It was amazing how little people questioned what happened all around them, including the presence of a shaking, coughing woman who refused to pull the hood of her pretty shabby wool coat from her head even inside the stuffy tram carriage. Reeling and light-headed and seeing stars, she dragged her poor body uphill, fighting the rising gusts of icy-cold wind and sleet as she went, slipping and tripping and nearly landing on her face a few times. When she got to the gates of her family home, she was wheezing, barely on her feet, and trying hard to suppress the urges to cough or swallow, since her throat was on fire. She raised her face to the security scanning system and failed to smile because her teeth were chattering too badly. The fever was back. Great.

For a moment, she wondered whether they'd even let her in, but then, the gate opened just enough for her to squeeze through it. The fifty metres from that spot to the door might as well be fifty thousand, but she managed to make her body move across the slippery stone path, up the few stairs, and over the threshold into the dry warmth of the lobby.

They were all there: Mother, Father, and Kal, standing in a comical half-circle of unspoken accusations – all frowning, all with their arms crossed, all tense.

With numb yet pins-and-needly fingers that shook badly enough to be dramatic, she pulled the soaking wet and heavy hood from her messy, sweaty hair. "Hey," she said, her voice broken and hoarse and weirdly gravelly. "I'm back." That was when her knees finally gave and the world was drowned out in blackness.


6 When Illura came to, she was lying in bed in her old room. Her throat was still a little sore, and her body felt heavy, but otherwise, she was basically cured. Her nose hurt a bit, but okay. She'd probably broken it falling down, and it had been promptly mended. Ah, the wonders of high-class medicine. It wasn't as if poorer people didn't have any access to anything such as the poor souls up on Karon Kill (and just thinking about Korr made her stomach clench badly), but the level of healing technology available to those in higher positions was something else. The explanation given for this discrepancy was that the higher-ups were in charge of leading Krypton and needed to function at all times, but Illura had always thought this was crap. Yes, she knew that resources were limited. Yes, she knew that life wasn't fair. But at least she didn't sugar-coat reality. If it were up to her, everyone would profit equally from what was available, but that was a whole other fight, and her own resources were limited, as well. Her goal was to bring freedom of choice back to her people. Everything else would have to wait.

She'd been lying in her fluffy, comfortable bed, feeling a little guilty about how nice it was to be effortlessly relaxed whilst her friends and comrades-in-arms (poor Korr and his broken ankle! She hoped he was coping) scraped a living off rocks and existed in squalor. Her room was big and bright and cheery, just like she had been as a child. Her mother had, once she'd hit puberty, joked that there must've been a glitch in the Codex when her DNA was programmed, because once Illura became a teenager, she'd turned sullen and moody. Illura herself had always argued that all she'd done was start to ask questions, but now, as an adult, she knew that that assessment hadn't been precisely accurate. Yes, she really had been quite dramatic. Yes, she'd whined a lot. Yes, she'd been typical that way and not nearly as unique as she'd fancied herself.

Rolling her eyes, she marvelled at how easy it was to fall back into old and trusted patterns.

That was when the ellanium door slid open and Kal stepped in, holding a tray with a steaming mug and bowl on it. Ah, Father's patented illness recipe: tea and soup. He was a bit sentimental that way, but Dom-Linn never passed up on the opportunity to be nurturing to his kids, even when he was at odds with them. It must have been torture for him and Mother, not knowing what their daughter was up to, being under the government's scrutiny because of Illura's actions.

Her innards knotted. She bit her tongue, tried to ignore the ugly sting of a guilty conscience. With everything going on, she'd quite forgotten to worry about her family, just brushing them off as conformist idiots. The truth, however, was always more complicated. Laboriously and with trembling and rubbery arms, she pushed herself into a sitting position, propped her pillows up behind herself, and leaned back with a sigh. She gave Kal, who was still standing by the door like a statue, holding onto that tray like it was a shield, a pointed look. "You can come closer, you know. I won't try to take you hostage."

That did it. A smile spread across his face, even though he was obviously trying to suppress it, and he crossed the distance between the door and the bed without hesitation. He sat down and carefully placed the tray on her outstretched legs, atop the heavy and thick duvet. "Smells like home, doesn't it?"

She inhaled deeply, eyes closed, before smiling at him. Just being in the same room with him made her feel light and youthful and carefree despite the circumstances. It had been a while since she'd allowed herself to miss her big brother. "Vegetable soup and red tea. The enticing sirens of nostalgia beckon to me."

He snickered, shook his head, and ran his fingers through his short, brown hair. "You and your drama."

"Me and my drama," she echoed, and sighed theatrically again, before starting to eat. It tasted just like she remembered, and it made her wish that her parents would come in as well, even if they couldn't find any kind words for her.

"So good to have you back," he said after a good long while, and briefly caressed the back of her head. "I knew you'd come home at some point. Our parents wouldn't believe me, but here you are, back again. Everything's gonna be better, now."

She put down the spoon, picked up the mug, and gave him a thoroughly unhappy look. There it was again, the heaviness. "Remember how you told me that I was only rebelling for rebellion's sake?"

A slight frown creased his forehead. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, Lu, but the fact that you came back proves that-"

"I didn't. I'm only here because I had no other choice."

An awkward silence ensued, during which they just gawped at each other, searching for words.

At length, the cubit obviously dropped, and his pupils widened. Then, he blew out a heavy breath. "They were right. It really was you."

"I'm not sorry," she said, sounding sharper and more petulant than she'd intended. After telling herself to cool it and after taking another few sips of the tea, she added, "I won't debate my opinions with you, Kal. I know you don't agree with me. I know that you-"

"But I do agree."

She nearly dropped the mug. A good number of seconds ticked by, during which she just stared at him, gobsmacked. "What." It came out deadpan and not as the befuddled question she'd expected.

He shrugged, scratched his neck, tried to sort out his hair with his fingers again. "Don't get me wrong: I think uploading everything you stole into the public feed was an impulsive and stupid move, because you have no idea what you've started. You can't. It reeks as a move of desperation. I know you, Lu. This is totally something you'd do if you felt cornered."

"This is the part where you tell me how exactly you agree with me," she said flatly.

His expression remained serious. "I used to think that following orders and ensuring Krypton's safety was a straight-forward affair, and that asking questions was akin to treason. But there's been so much going wrong lately, I can't help but wonder if we wouldn't be better off with more choices. The law's supposed to be clear-cut, but the way it's enforced by Tryon Hill is not how it's supposed to go. It's not what benefits the people best, but what Zod and the likes of him believe is best." He licked his lips and chewed on the inside of his cheek. His gaze was unfocussed, as if he were having trouble looking her in the eye. "You know about the temple that was dug out of Borok Hill?"

"Yes," she said, hesitant. This behaviour of his was weirding her out somewhat, truth be told.

"Do you also know that they might've found Var-El's engine in there?"

Again, her jaw dropped. A chill crept down her spine. Acid sloshed in her stomach. Gooseflesh erupted all over her skin. "What."

He scratched his neck again and glanced up at the beige ceiling. "Yes. It might just be a model, but preliminary examinations have yielded some very disconcerting results. You'd think that the person most qualified to deal with this would be Jor-El, since he's the top scientist and also Var-El's descendant, but no. The thing is safely tucked away at the bowels of Tryon Hill, and this security leak is just the excuse Zod and his rabid sidekick need in order to keep it there forever, or worse, use it for their own advantage."

Her thoughts were racing. How…could this…were they…oh, dear. She took a few deep, steadying breaths. "We need to get that thing, Kal. Kal." She grabbed his wrist and squeezed. "We need to get that thing."

Finally, he locked eyes with her again. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and the bridge of his nose. He blanched. "They'd catch us."

"Not necessarily. You work there. They don't suspect you." She frowned. "Or do they?"

His one-eighty on the subject was a little off, after all, and he'd never been that great an actor. "No. But it's a suicide mission, Lu, and completely insane. Also, what makes you think I'd commit treason?"

"The same thing that made me upload the info onto the public feed," she said, and smiled grimly. "Desperation."

He rubbed at his forehead. "They'll find out it was you in no time. You need to get the hell out of here."

By his wording, she surmised that their parents hadn't given her up to the authorities, which gave her a mild case of the warm and fuzzies. Telling herself to focus, she said, "No. No, no, no. Let them catch me."

"What? Are you crazy? You're crazy."

She took his hand into hers. "Let them catch me. Not only will this make you lot look good, but I got a plan."

The expression on his face made him look like he was expecting an electric shock. "I was afraid you were gonna say something like this."


7 There were cameras all over Kandor. Not everyone was comfortable with the idea of being watched whenever they set foot outside their homes, but it was a necessary measure. Public security was more important than anyone's wish for anonymity, and most people could agree on this, in Faora's experience. Now, even the most doubtful critics of public surveillance would just have to admit that it was a necessary tool to ensure the safety of the populace. If anyone could still doubt that whatever measures were taken to keep Krypton safe were justified, they were clueless fools and worthy of nothing but disdain. In light of what was currently happening, Faora could honestly not understand how anyone could still oppose the Warrior Guild and call themselves patriots. It made no sense.

Then again, the adherents of the Cult of Rao and their disruptive actions made exactly zero sense to her, either. There was just no arguing logically with some people.

The upload of the information to the public feed had been a shock, but she was a soldier and trained to deal with the unexpected, including unexpected catastrophes. Assessing the entire scope of the damage done wasn't possible yet, but damage control measures were already being implemented. Her personal task was to find the traitor in their midst, and the easiest way to do that was to find out who was responsible for the upload. She got the feeling that this had not been the original plan. It was too risky an action, too desperate. That was something that worked in her favour, this desperation. Desperate people made mistakes, such as accessing classified information at a public computer port. Those were always watched by several cameras, too.

The person responsible had displayed a modicum of cleverness by covering their face and never looking up, as well as not leaving prints. Still, it would only be a matter of a few hours at the most before all data collected at the port and the surrounding cameras could be sorted, and the culprit's steps be retraced. Then, they'd be caught, and then, the traitor would be unmasked.

The lieutenant general was right: the time to tip-toe had come and gone. Now was the time to act decisively and fearlessly and to finally end any and all threats to Krypton and her people.