The Right to Die | ✓ Amby Winner 2023

22. The Way Out

The dim room inside hosted banks of consoles and blinking buttons in a great semi-circle. Above them all, a giant window, taller than Aevryn's house, looked out over the city. Dust covering the glass made the world look twice as snowy as it should be. Chairs sat in front of all the consoles, but a larger chair rested before the console in the middle, and M'yu hurried over to it. Behind him, the door swooshed closed, and M'yu's chest clenched. That might keep random people from wandering in, but if the techs were paying attention at all, there had been a lot of activity in this otherwise abandoned area. They may-or-may not be able to override the AI's control, but they sure as rot could notify the guards to wait outside the door.

Better make this quick.

The chair hugged M'yu as he settled into it. The console lit up with a tap, and M'yu searched through its menus. Navigation, Life Support, Engine Systems... He flicked through, growing increasingly frustrated. He hadn't come here to fly the rotting ship! Besides, most of these systems were dead, offline, except—

M'yu's brow furrowed, and he clicked open one system that looked like it was still operational. Signal Cloaker, it read. He tapped out a command to get access to its code, but it opened in read-only mode. He scrolled down, trying to make sense of it. Part of the code—a small part—seemed to be what kept M'yu from detecting and latching onto the Prav'sudja's port earlier. But the rest of the code—

It was beyond M'yu, far beyond him, but whatever it was, it had enough bandwidth to reach the whole city. M'yu shook his head, the astronomical numbers swimming before his eyes. No, it reached far beyond the city. Maybe...

Maybe beyond the planet.

Aevryn might have lied to him about some things, but those holodisplays... M'yu bit his lip. Those weren't lies. And the Tsar who filmed those videos had thought he was coming back. He'd counted on the pigs that ran the world to the ground now to keep his city safe and to help him get back home. He didn't deserve to be locked out of his planet, and the Caps didn't deserve to get away with it.

M'yu turned the Signal Cloaker off.

The AI Peitros appeared, flickering in blue light. "Invalid operation," he informed M'yu. "The current settings were set by a previous Tsaright. To override them, you must of equal or higher station."

M'yu's lip curled, and he glanced down at his map. If he stayed, he might be able to find a workaround, maybe, but those linkcard dots were heading in a direction that looked concerningly like his.

Cursing, he pushed out of the chair. The door swooshed open as he approached, and he limped down the hall, following the map on Ruslan's linkcard. This section of the Prav'sudja didn't have as many halls and connecting paths as the other. There were—he swiped through as he hurried along—three routes. In the left hall, dots moved in clusters down toward him; in the center hall, a smaller group of dots hit the mouth of the corridor. If there were any guards moving toward the right hall...

M'yu broke into a run, eyes watering and vision bursting with bright dots of pain. If there were guards headed toward the right hall, they were far enough away to be out of range. He kept glancing down as he ran, checking, worrying. They're going to catch me, and this is all going to be for nothing. The first dot appeared, not quite to the hall mouth yet. M'yu tried to speed up, then stumbled as his lungs begged for breath that his injured rib refused to give. He leaned against the wall, watching with mounting horror as the dots trickled into the mouth of the corridor. They're going to catch me.

He glanced back, then down at his map. The other two tunnels were already marked full. But maybe if he could hide in the hall, near the chamber all three connected to, there was a chance one tunnel would empty and he could slip—