We paused outside his front door while he stuck his thumb against a panel above the doorknob, unlocking the door with his fingerprint.

  “Wait here a sec while I disable the security system,” he said, slipping through the door into his dark unit and closing it behind him, leaving me outside.

  I heard him move across the unit. Muffled beeps from inside made it to my ears. The lights went on, and he opened the door again.

  “Come on in.”

  I stepped inside and froze. His entire living room was a maze of computer towers and monitors arranged on a multitude of small desks and tables, the wires snaking everywhere. All of them were currently powered down, but I knew instinctively they had likely been active until the minute I’d responded to his initial text. A recliner sat against the wall,with a pair of magazine racks on either side. A handful of keyboards with integrated trackpads were jammed into the racks. Empty beer bottles littered the floor amidst the wires. A folding table still had a McDonalds bag sitting on it, along with two ashtrays filled with old cigarettes.

  “Keep, you’re a slob,” I said, taking it all in.

  “Some things are more important than cleanliness,” he replied.

  I followed his voice to the bedroom. He had removed a picture from a wall of a cat hanging onto the end of a branch, revealing a small safe behind it. Opening the safe, he picked out a fanny pack that he quickly strapped to his waist, an iPhone, a handgun, and a magazine for it. He loaded the gun and stuck it in the fanny pack before retrieving a second, loading it, and holding it out to me.

  “Do I really need that?” I asked, rather than taking it.

  “I hope not, kid,” he replied. “But better safe than sorry, right?”

  "Yeah, I suppose." I accepted the gun, a lot more comfortable with it than I would have been a few weeks ago. I didn’t tuck it into my pants. Instead, I dropped it and my duffel on Keep’s bed and began to undress.

  “Whoa,” Keep said. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve never been in a locker room before?” I asked, amused when Keep turned his attention back to the safe as I pulled off a pair of George’s a-little-too-roomy boxers, swapping everything for my own clothes. “So much better.”

  “Not a bad idea, kid,” Keep said, digging the last item out of the safe. He turned toward me and held it out.

  “No, I won’t marry you,” I replied as I looked down at the ring in his hand. It looked sort of like a wedding band, with a small diamond mounted in the center between the lines of the single sigil etched into the silver metal.

  “Smart-ass,” Keep said. “Take it and put it on whichever finger it fits.” He dropped the sigiltech ring into my palm, and I tried it on different fingers. My hands were skinnier than his, and it stayed best on my index finger. “Let me see.”

  I held my hand out. Keep took it and used his thumb to press down on the center diamond. Immediately, something bit hard into my skin beneath the ring. “Ow,” I said, a sudden tingle traveling all the way up my arm, through my shoulder, and up my spine.. “What the hell?”

  “Push it again to retract the needle,” he said. “Though I recommend leaving it in place unless you intend to take the ring off.”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “Believe me, kid. If you know it’s coming, it hurts more.”

  He moved to his closet and opened it up, revealing duplicates of the same outfit he had been in when we met.

  “I’ll be in the living room,” I said, sticking the gun in the back of my waistband and grabbing my duffle before leaving him to change out of his flannel-wear.

  In the living room, I examined the computers more closely, realizing they were hibernating, not powered down. Flopping into his recliner, I picked up one of the keyboards and tapped the enter key, assuming it would take the connected machine out of hibernation. One of the large monitors activated a moment later, revealing a Windows authentication screen.

  “Hey, Keep,” I shouted. “What’s your password?”

  "Password for what?” he replied.

  “Your computers.”

  He poked his head out of his bedroom, still bare-chested. “I’m not giving you my password.”

  “Why not? You found me. This setup is moot now, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose that’s true. It’s DuchessDryka. Both Ds are capitalized.”

  I typed it in, gaining access to the machine. Its programs were already open and still running, revealing a series of security camera views of VR Awesome!. I found Star Squadron right away.

  “You were watching me the entire time?” I asked, loud enough for Keep to hear me in the bedroom.

  “I watched everyone who played the games,” he replied. “At all of the VR Awesome! locations. The other screens have the ingame footage which I showed you on the ship. One of the other boxes is connected to the account creation database so I could run background checks on the promising players, as well as peruse their bank accounts.” He came out of the bedroom, dressed in a pinstriped suit with a blue tie, the fanny pack strapped over his suit pants. He didn’t seem to have a second overcoat. I imagined he also had a shoulder holster for the gun hidden beneath his jacket. He pointed at one of the PC towers, the largest in the collection. “That one has a database of all the potentials I tracked over the years. Over ten thousand in all.”

  “You said I was one in a million. More like one in ten thousand, then.”

  “Ten thousand potentials. More than a million players. But I don’t need any of this stuff anymore. Pass me the keyboard.”

  I handed it to him without a second thought. He used it one-handed, opening a terminal window and typing in a command that activated all of the other machines. A dozen monitors came to life, all showing different scenes of people playing virtual reality games at different places around the world. The programs shut down, all of the screens switching to the same command line.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He typed something else into the keyboard. A box popped up on every monitor.

  CONFIRM CLEAN AND RESET? Y/N

  “You’re erasing everything?” I asked. “Twenty years of work?”

  “Yep,” he replied as he typed in the Y and hit enter. “I found what I was looking for. It’s you, kid. We either get this done, or we both die.”

  All of the monitors showed a progress bar starting at zero percent.

  “The script will install a virus when it’s done that’ll render the machines inoperable,” Keep said. “We don’t need to stick around. Grab your bag; we’re done here.”

  I stood and picked up my duffel as he dropped the keyboard back into the magazine rack and pushed back the cuff of his shirt, revealing a new Rolex underneath.

  “We’ve got twenty minutes to get to the hardware store to buy some tools,” he said. “Chop chop, Bennie.”

  “Are you going to miss living here?” I asked as we exited his apartment.

  He locked the door behind us and used his newly reacquired phone to reset the alarm. “It served its purpose. But yeah, a little. Earth’s a nice planet. Let’s try to keep it that way.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “So, how does this work?” I asked, looking at the sigiltech ring as we drove to the hardware store.

  “I told you the components already, remember?” Keep replied. “One?”

  “A catalyst. It’s already jabbed into my finger. It still kind of stings.”`

  “No pain, no gain, kid. Second?”

  “A sigil. What does this one mean?”

  “It’s push. I have it on my sleeve too. It’s one of the easiest to learn because you naturally know how to move things physically. So all you need to do is translate that to mental focus. It’s like the hello world of sigils. Three?”

  “You just gave it to me. A focus word. What’s yours for push?”

  “Distra.”

  “Like distribute?”

  He smirked. “Never thought of it that way, but yeah maybe it is. That’s the basic command. Since it’s the only sigil on the ring, you can’t combine it with anything. You don’t have to use distra. You can use whatever you want, but it needs to be unique to the sigil and you don’t want to set it off by accident, so I wouldn’t try to use push. Four?”

  “Give it a specific instruction. I guess in this case, it would be what to push?”

  “And how.”

  “How?”

  “Direction.”

  “If I push it toward me, isn’t that pull?”

  “I suppose that could be one application,” Keep answered with a bigger smirk. “Good thinking. But pull can do a lot more than that, especially when combined with other sigils. Just don’t go trying to mess with that in the car. You’re liable to blow out the windows or blast off the doors or something. Activating the sigils is relatively easy. Controlling the output is where you separate the wheat from the chaff.”

  I continued staring at the ring. I wanted so much to try it out, but I wasn’t about to go against Keep’s warning, especially in Gloria’s car. “Can push do anything else?”

  “In combination with other sigils, sure. The trick is not to think about the sigil’s meaning too literally. Like you already pointed out, a reverse push is a pull. What if you push yourself? Or, what if you push air forward and backward at the same time?”

  “You get a wall of air,” I answered.

  “Bingo! And there’s a lot of potential applications for a wall of air, isn’t there?”

  I smiled, enjoying the lesson. “Yeah, I can think of a few. And all of that through one symbol?”

  “As you would say, it’s pretty awesome.”

  “But the Grimoire had at least a hundred sigils in it. What’s the most seemingly impossible thing you can do with them?”

  “From what I understand, during the height of their usage they were making entire starships invisible. Not just to sensors, but to the naked eye as well.”

  “Seriously? Do you know how you would make something invisible?”

  “I’ve never done it myself. Off the top of my head. I would imagine you need sigils for reflect and absorb. Maybe negate. And others I don’t know. The general idea would be to prevent anything from bouncing off the invisible object, or if it does to return it as an image of whatever is on the other side. It’s definitely a complex action that nobody alive today knows how to do.”

  “But if they had the Grimoire, they might?”

  “They might,” Keep agreed. “Which is why we can’t let Sedaya get his hands on the Grimoire.”

  “Which is with Alter and Matt right now,” I said. “I bet he has every mercenary in the Spiral looking for them.”

  “Quite probably,” Keep answered, sending a chill down my spine. “I already told you not to worry too much. Alter knows what she’s doing, and it’s still a big galaxy.”

  “There’s no way to use the sigils to get in touch with them, is there?”

  “RIght now? No. It can be done by two archons creating a small tear in spacetime to one another and speaking through it, but the focus and skill required is intense. Both archons would also need to possess the proper sigils.”

  “But sigiltech isn’t exactly common in the universe, right?” I said. “I imagine that when it was outlawed, most of it was destroyed?”

  “Presumably,” Keep agreed. “But what you told me about the Grimoire and the glove you say you captured suggests that maybe there’s more of it than there should be still laying around the universe."

  “What about making new sigiltech items?”

  “The catalysts are composed of specific compounds. The recipe and factories were destroyed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Keep glanced over at me, his normally stern expression showing a surprising hint of fear. “I used to be. None of this should have ever come back into the light of stars.”

  “But you’re an archon. You know about it when no one else should. How?”

  “Looks like we made it just in time,” Keep said, turning the car into the hardware store parking lot and once again avoiding my question. What was it about the origins of his knowledge of sigiltech that made him so reluctant to share the details?

  He guided the car to a spot near the front. With fifteen minutes until closing, the lot was quiet, and I expected the store would be equally dead.

  “Grab a cart, will you?” Keep said as we neared the entrance. He hurried ahead of me as I pulled a cart from the row and gave chase.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  “Basic stuff, mostly. Screwdrivers, ratchet wrenches, hammer, mallet, blah, blah. We have to take apart Flippy’s fuselage to get the catalyst out. Then we can transfer it to another vehicle. Then when we’re ready, we can take it back to the Spiral.”

  “When we’re ready,” I said. “When will that be?”

  “Minimum? When you can execute push with total control.”

  “And you think that’ll take weeks?”

  “On top of breaking down Flippy, yeah.”

  “I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit.”

  “I don’t think you realize it’s not as easy as it sounds. But I'll be happy to see you exceed my expectations, kid.”

  The store was independently owned, sized somewhere between a Home Depot and an Ace Hardware, the aisles narrow and crowded with product, the tiled floor scuffed and worn. A handful of registers near the front were overloaded with impulse items, including stuff that didn’t necessarily fit with hardware. Candy bars, soft drinks, magazines. With my attention on the sigiltech ring, I hadn’t noticed until now that we’d drifted from an okay part of town to a not-so-great part, and the store interior reflected that.

  “We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” one of the clerks said to me as Keep barrelled ahead, disappearing down the aisle with the screwdrivers.

  “We’ll be quick,” I replied, trailing far enough behind him that he brought the set of over one hundred screwdrivers back to the cart and dumped it in. He picked up an expensive cordless drill/driver combo next and added it to the screwdrivers, manically rushing into another aisle.

  “Is he okay?” the oddly tall, lanky clerk asked, following along behind us. He was a couple of years younger than me, with large eyes and a small, wide nose.

  “I think he’s got a pretty extensive list in his head,” I replied. “And you’re closing soon.”

  “You aren’t going to steal this stuff, are you?”

  “No, why?”

  “We get that at least once a month. Guys come in, fill a shopping cart, run out with it to a getaway car with no plates. Load it up and take off.”

  “Really? I didn’t know tools were in such high demand.”

  “The local gangs use them to strip stolen cars.” He smiled. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Come on, kid,” Keep said, returning to the cart with a wrench set. “Some of this stuff is heavy. I’d rather not have to carry it all back to you.”

  “I’m coming,” I replied to the clerk’s amusement. I tailed Keep through the aisles as he loaded more stuff into the cart, quickly piling it high enough he had to balance each item carefully to keep them all from falling out. “Are you sure we need all this?”

  “Better to have too many tools we don’t need than to have to make another trip to the store.”

  “I’m sure we could have bought this stuff in Fresno.”

  “Not tonight we couldn’t. This way we can get Gloria’s car back faster. I thought that’s what you wanted?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m trying to be sensitive here, kid. Badabing badaboom. It’s not my typical MO.”

  “In that case, I appreciate it.”

  We worked our way to the back, where Keep looked over the selection of hammers and mallets. I stood behind the cart, waiting, not all that interested in the tools.

  Shouting at the front of the store caught my attention. Glancing at Keep, it seemed he either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. I tried to ignore it until the words “give us all the cash or I’ll put a bullet in you” registered in my mind. I also heard multiple carts careening through the store, small crashes indicating they were being loaded in a bigger hurry than Keep had loaded ours.

  In the past, the circumstance might have sent me cowering somewhere, eager to stay out of trouble and the line of fire. I had been through too much over the last month to let what was happening here shake me up. Instead, I backed up to the corner of the aisle and peered around the shelving. The clerk I had been talking to was behind one of the registers, hands in the air and shaking because a guy in a hood and mask had a gun in his face. A little closer to me, another pair of hoods whipped around the corner from one aisle to the next, grabbing inventory.

  Once a month. Tonight was the night. Lucky me.

  “Keep,” I said softly, getting his attention as he dropped a hammer into the cart.

  “What?”

  “There’s a group of hoods robbing the place.”

  “So?”

  I looked back at him. “What do you mean, so?”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “You’re a wizard. We can stop them.”

  “I’m an archon. Big difference.”

  “We can still stop them.”

  “And draw unwanted attention to ourselves? Bennie, this place gets robbed all the time. It’s the nature of things right now.”

  “And that makes it right? They have a gun to the clerk’s head.”

  Keep shrugged. “Not our problem. We’ll just play it cool until they’re gone, and then we’ll go up and pay for our haul.”

  “Hurry up!” I heard the hood snap at the clerk. Returning my attention to him, I watched him pass over some bills with shaky hands. I couldn’t believe Keep wanted us to just go about our business like this wasn’t happening.

  How the hell could I save the galaxy if I couldn’t even prevent a hardware store from being robbed?

  I turned back to Keep, intent on repeating the question out loud to him. He had taken out his phone and was looking over an apparent shopping list I hadn’t seen him make.