It was a thrill that sent Codi all the way back to her days on Kantha, back when she'd been the biggest nuisance on the continent, terrorizing schools left, right and centre. Following Rokki, being somewhere she knew she shouldn't be, it helped her remember the old Codi James. Some of that life was better left behind, but she didn't mind the nostalgia.
And from the way he'd effortlessly broken them into one of the most secure areas in the building, she suspected Rokki Thakkar had a similarly colourful past. He moved with a dismissive confidence, as though the rules and regulations of civilised society simply didn't apply to him.
The four of them had descended well into the guts of the Arena, well beyond even the construction sub-levels that had been home to their first clandestine meeting. The place was eerily quiet after the constant noise and chaos of the Gauntlet up above.
Kye had a small backpack strapped tightly to him, containing the apparatus he needed to make his examination of Darkwood's exoskeleton, if and when they reached it. With the focus of the team and the coaches on Chris O'Leary's current fight, it left them a small, unimpeded window of opportunity to get to work.
She'd watched with a mixture of amazement and apprehension as Rokki Thakkar broke into a hard-sealed maintenance panel with what she could only describe as a magnet. One by one he held the strange tubular instrument up to the bolts that held the plate of metal in place, and one by one each of the flat-headed bolts fell out into his waiting palm.
"Can't just break 'em open," he explained with a hint of pride. "Otherwise they'll know we were down here. Use this gizmo, shake the little bastards loose and then we can stick 'em back in on the way out."
And so it proved to be. He vibrated the bolts loose and with Kye's help they removed the heavy metal panel and placed it silently to one side. The passage they currently stood in was long and thin, barely wide enough for them to walk in pairs and white circular lights in the ceiling filled it with a tepid glow.
The passage revealed by the panel was much smaller.
Codi stepped forward to peer inside the dim-lit tunnel. It was maybe a meter square, if that, and only lit by thin lines of white that ran down the centre of the floor and ceiling. The air smelt strange, tinged with some kind of chemical that she couldn't place. She wrinkled her nose. Not the most inviting place.
"What is this thing?" she asked quietly.
"Circulation coolant maintenance shaft," Rokki reeled off. "There's millions on Io. Need to keep the blocks cool, y'know?"
"What's one doing here?"
"Think the gear they have down there doing all the building runs cold?" He gave her a wry smile. "These things let the extra burn out from all the machines that do the buildin' and the Lock-Tech. Runs right through the middle of it."
She smiled shaking her head slowly. "How the hell did you know about this?"
"I've been around the Gauntlet a few years. And I got a few curious bones."
"Do you know your way once you're inside there?" Kye asked, his tone making it clear that he had severe doubts about it.
Rokki shrugged. "I've got a pretty good idea."
"Pretty good?" Ripple gave Codi a dubious look. "Care to up your confidence on that one?"
"Just trust me, Goldilocks."
Ripple stiffened visibly at his blasé attitude, but Codi, despite herself, had to stifle a laugh. She looked at her team mate, shrugged, then nodded to Rokki.
"Okay, pal, lead the way."
"Hope none of ya are allergic to small spaces," he chuckled, before placing his hands on the edge of the hatch and levering himself inside. Codi waited for a moment, took a steadying breath, and then followed him.
It was cold and crisp inside the vents, like crawling around inside an empty refrigerator. They shuffled onward in Rokki's wake, keeping their movements smooth and quiet, though Codi doubted there was anyone nearby to hear them. Kye stayed close on her heels, with Ripple bringing up the rear, gliding along on fingertips and toes with the grace of a cat.
More than once she felt a surge of worry as Rokki stopped at a junction, his rugged features creasing with thought as he looked left and right, before muttering something to himself and picking a path. They dipped up and down, left and right, and after several minutes heat began building in the vent. Before long Codi was forced to start wiping sweat from her eyes, blinking and becoming painfully aware of how utterly lost she was. If Rokki had taken a wrong turn she had no idea how long it would take them to get out.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" she whispered hoarsely as they paused at another junction.
"Sure I do," Rokki chuckled, seemingly unbothered by the heat. "Just been a little while since I made this trip. You guys need to unwind a stretch." He glanced back over his shoulder, let out another short, maniacal laugh and then slithered down a sloping section of vent to the left. Codi blew out her cheeks in a weary sigh, and then followed him.
At last, after what had felt like years inside the hot, clammy vents, they reached an access panel leading out, and Rokki looked back, giving them a thumbs up signal. He drew his strange tool from his pocket and shook the bolts free from the panel again, neatly catching the metal plate before it could tumble out and crash to the ground. Moving with a painstaking care she would not have associated with him, he levered his body around the plate then slipped out of the vent. A dull clunk sounded as his boots struck metal.
The plate disappeared, and then Rokki's face popped up again over the edge of the vent. "C'mon then, we're here."
Relief flooded through her and Codi scrambled eagerly out of the vent, dropping into merciful open space. As Kye and Ripple followed, she glanced around, taking stock of their surroundings.
The storage area from the exoskeletons was rather less impressive than she'd been expecting. Built away from the invasive clamour of the upper levels that thronged with humanity, it had been constructed for utility, nothing more. It a large, cube-shaped space, with long conveyor belts working their way up the walls like ivy. Below them, filling the walls on either side, were ranks of coffin-like cubicles that held the exoskeletons.
Crisp, antiseptic light from bars in the ceiling illuminated the space, and as they dropped from the coolant vent Codi quickly realised Rokki had been correct. The heat washed over her, a muggy, metal-tasting plunge into hot air generated by the systems of the Lock-Tech.
In this late stage of the competition many of the cubicles were now empty as smaller academies with no remaining competitors had packed up their gear. Many others still glowed with a gentle blue, their maintenance mechanisms humming with power.
"A'right folks," Rokki said quietly. "Everybody split up and find that big goon's skeleton. Sharpish!"
She had no arguments with that. Glancing at Kye, she shrugged and set off, working her way down the lines of exoskeleton cubicles, searching for the Black Horizon suit. The others peeled away in different directions, mounting the thin metal stairways that accessed the upper ranks.
A minute later Ripple's harsh but triumphant whisper beckoned them to the upper left corner of the grid, and Codi looked up to find the girl beckoning furiously. Scrambling up the stairway to join her, she skidded to a halt, staring at the cubicle. Laying lengthways inside it a jet black cradle with the name DARKWOOD, K. emblazoned on the upper right section in white letters. Beneath the name was the sun motif of the academy.
"Gotcha," Rokki declared, stepping past them and pressing a large, disc-like button built into the right side of the cubicle frame. A faint hiss sounded, and then the exoskeleton cradle slowly slid from its refuge, out into the light. He turned and gave Codi an impish grin. "Time f'yer boyfriend to get to work."
Codi felt the blood rush to her cheeks. Beside her Kye sighed in exasperation and stepped towards the cradle.
"Alright then..." he murmured. "Let's see what we can see."
Slinging his backpack off his shoulder, he undid the zip with a barely audible rasp. From inside he withdrew a broad, rectangular device that sat balanced on the palm of his hand. A series of holographic dials and buttons sprang up in lower half of it, below a glittering screen filled with numbers and letters.
Plunging one hand back into the backpack, he withdrew a small three-pronged square that plugged into the side of his pad. Codi watched, uncomprehending as the lights on the square blinked from red to blue. Then the fingers of Kye's free hand started flashing over the holographic interfaces as he delivered his instructions. A moment later the lights on the square moved to green and at that instant the cradle holding Keefer Darkwood's exoskeleton hummed into life, rising from its protective bed in the wall and sliding out towards them.
"Damn," Rokki chuckled approvingly. "You got some tech in your brain, buddy."
"Thanks," Kye murmured, not looking up at him, eyes narrow with focus as he stared at the readouts on his pad. "The initial diagnostic run looks normal – standard exoskeleton specs."
"If they are hiding something it was hardly going to appear on a normal inspection," Ripple interjected, an edge of impatience creeping into her voice.
Kye said nothing, but Codi saw his shoulders tense. Pressing his lips tightly together he flashed more silent commands into the pad. As he did, a sudden projection shot up out of the cradle with such suddenness that Codi couldn't stop herself from take a step back in surprise. Then the gleaming lines of electric blue coalesced into an image and she realised it was a holographic representation of the exoskeleton in the cradle.
"Wow..." she breathed.
"Alpha Level Diagnostic Protocols," Kye explained absently. "Takes the suit apart layer by layer to look for abnormalities. I ... borrowed it from the technicians' base and ramped the invasiveness up a few notches. Now, let's have a look at those sensors."
A tense silence descended on them as Kye set to work, peeling away molecule after molecule of the exoskeleton's structure. The dim hum of the active cradles was starting to make Codi's head hurt and she found herself pacing softly back and forth. Ripple watched the hologram intently; Rokki seemed bored, lounging against the nearest wall and drumming fingers against his thighs, nodding his head to a beat only he could hear.
After a few minutes, Kye made a sound, somewhere between a snort and a groan and straightened up, staring at a zoomed in section of the hologram. Codi followed his stare. The diagram had zeroed in on a tiny section at the base of the neck where a cluster of impact sensors were situated. He pressed another button and it focused even more, not pulling out a single sensor. At such magnification it looked like a simple disc with a tiny bulge in its centre.
"The mass is off," Kye said quietly as he looked down at his pad. "Only by a couple of micrograms, but its enough. Even across all the sensors it wouldn't make a noticeable difference to the weigh-in tests, but it might be what we're looking for."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that each of these sensors is carrying something a little extra. Now if I just ..." another flickering motion of his fingers and the display of the sensor was flayed apart by his code. What remained was a small speck of red, an oval shape with eight thin rods jutting from its flanks like a metal spider.
"Jackpot," Kye breathed.
"That it?" Rokki grunted, frowning at the display. "The hell is it?"
"It's a damned piggy-back sensor," Kye continued, anger creeping into his voice. "We were right. I didn't think you could even get tech like this out on the colonies. That thing is barely a micrometer across – it's fixed between the impact sensor and the exoskeleton's circuits."
"That doesn't sound good." Codi looked at him. "What exactly does it do?"
"It works like a valve. Normally the information flow is one-way," he explained. "Someone hits you, the impact sensors register the hit and transmit the signal out to be recorded and collated. This little bastard overrides that and opens the sensor up to outside transmissions. Someone can transmit the trigger for the sleeper code in the exoskeleton systems through this, and there you go. Keefer Darkwood starts hitting harder. Unless it's actually happening you'd never know this thing was there. And without stripping the sensor to bits like this the Gauntlet techs would never find it. As good a stitch up job as you'll ever see."
He looked at Codi, his jaw tight with anger. She looked back, feeling the familiar churn in the base of her stomach, that sensation of wanting to tear something apart with her bare hands. Her fists clenched. They had their confirmation – Black Horizon had moved the goalposts, and done it without anyone noticing. The biggest sporting contest in human history, and they were cheating their way through it.
Eventually, out of everyone, it was Ripple who said what they were all thinking.
"Son of a bitch."