Derin Edala

046: INTERDEPENDENCE

I leap to my feet. The first stupid, stupid thought to go through my brain is, “Oh no! Zombies!” Which is, of course, ridiculous. It’s not zombies. That’s the alarm for…

Um. I’m not actually sure what that alarm is for. It’s not one of the few I was trained for as a colonist, ...

4.99: Those We Love

“You know,” Kylie said, “there’s another reason why this secret message might have been handed off so clumsily. With a fake birthday present and everything.”

We were sitting in one of the tunnels leading to the Lake of Inquisition, safe from prying eyes, puzzling over Gertrude’s...

4.98: In Another Life

I lay on the beach, on what had been dry sand, but the tide was starting to come in and the crest of every wave kissed my bare toes. I lay me head in Saina’s lap while she carded her fingers gently through my hair. Some way down the beach, I could see Hammond, trying to give us space while also...

4.97: The Library

The next video showed mostly the ceiling. My tablet must have been set down on a desk or something.

“So you’re saying that was the spell amalgamate you met during your Initiation?” Max asked.

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Strange.”

“‘Creepy as all fuck’, more ...

045: ZOMBIES

It’s movie night.

We’re about four years out from Hylara, and one of the things keeping us all sane is movie night. Tal insisted on the name and it stuck, even though we also share audio, holograms, books, and occasional games. Every six days, one of us (we have a rotating schedule) pic...

4.96: Descent

In the video, we descended the staircase.

The diameter of the staircase was much larger than most, the central stone pillar being the entire width of the sculpture above, so there weren’t that many actual rotations. The pillar was right in the middle of the flat wall of a huge semicircula...

4.95: Recovered Memories

“So you’re allowed to talk to me, then?” I asked, scrambling over my bed and pulling the curtains shut. “Is something wrong? Should I wake Kylie?”

“I… wouldn’t do that,” Max said. “I get the impression that she doesn’t like me very much. And no, the others don’t know...

044: EARTH

I wait for the other shoe to drop. I wait for us to discover some new horrible thing about the stage 2 patients, or for the AI to try to kill us all over something stupid, or for someone to develop some deadly health complication as a result of the synnerves in our bodies. It… doesn’t happen....

4.94: Impractical Magic

Stacey left her location on on the school map, so it was no trouble at all to track her to the library. She was combing over some kind of complicated rune diagram with di Fiore, but looked up and smiled brightly when she saw me. “Kayden! What’s up?”

“Hi.” I braced myself against t...

4.93: Reassessment

Stacey didn’t have any particularly difficult questions for me. She asked me a lot about the problems and perks of being a familiar, of how magic affected me and how that impacted my life. It was fortunate that the questions were so basic and easy, because I wasn’t focused at all.

I was...

043: OUTSOURCING

“Artificial intelligences aren’t truly intel – ”

“Nope!” Tal raises a finger. “Artificial brains aren’t truly intelligent. Circuits can’t do what neurons can, no matter how you design or program them. But you know what can do the job of neurons? Neurons. You guys ...

042: DECEPTION

“Um,” I say. “Yes. It does.”

“Nope! The ten per cent category is, so far as I can tell, a zero per cent category. Every single person you’ve tried to revive from that category has gone into fits and either immediately ripped their own brains out via their faulty cranial port, or...

4.92: Culpability

My next day off was also the day I’d agreed to give an interview to Stacey, the ‘magihacker’ I’d met at Josh’s party. I spent the morning with Kylie, searching through our possessions and Max’s noted for absolutely anything except the little glass test tube that could qualify as the �...

4.91: Interrogating Destiny

So we went to the medical ward, painted the runes in blood, opened the door and cleaned it very thoroughly before walking through to avoid a lecture from Malas, and stepped out onto the desert sands.

“It always seems a bit weird,” I remarked, “how we walk sideways through a door in or...

Ask Me Anything 7 -- Mae Jones

What's the coolest thing in Haven?

Me, obviously.

What's the worst thing in Haven?

Hmm, probably the way it strongarms children into perpetual servitude and educates them to spend the rest of their lives in this giant magic cult. That, or the eg...

041: TARGET

I lie back and stare at the ceiling, deep in thought. Tinera stops nibbling on my collarbone and pulls herself up onto her hands to glare down at me. “You’re working.”

“What? No, I’m here with you.”

“You’re working here.” She taps my skull.

“There’s a lot g...

4.90: Memory Gambit

“So,” I said, “I was in bed, and – ”

“Are you hurt?” Malas asked. He took my chin in one huge hand and shone a little light in my eyes, checking for pupil dilation. “Any change in your head pain?”

“My head’s fine. I – ”

“I’m going to have to scan yo...

4.89: There's A Perfectly Reasonable Explanation For This

“Max,” Kylie said, faintly, disbelievingly.

“What the hell?” I tried to lunge forward again, but the janitor restraining me knew what they were doing, and had my arms behind my back in some kind of immobilising hold that I couldn’t twist out of. “I cannot believe you! Seriously,...

Bonus snippet -- the Agent and the Eye

The agent strode into the room and looked the prisoner up and down. The man was small and tired-looking, his clothing ragged, but only a little roughed up – he must have surrendered quickly. He was tied to the only piece of furniture in the small room, a sturdy chair, with his hands bound in fr...

040: RECAP

The corpse’s kill switch had been successfully destroyed by the electrostatic shield, so we spend a day carefully lowering everyone under the ship and bringing them back up. We’re really careful about it, taking our time and using a lot of tethers, but it still looks terrifying. I’m glad, s...

4.88: Behind The Scenes

The back wall of the room was gone. Instead, the storage room stretched on, twice its original size, and a quick inspection of the shelves showed that this stock was magical in nature, magical potions and poultices and what looked like a shelf of enchanted medical equipment hidden behind a locked...

4.87: The Room

I’m not an idiot. I knew the stuff he’d said about helping clear Cheryl’s name was bullshit. Not the position she was in, all of that sounded like it was probably true, and he might even believe she was actually framed (although he was probably pretending to agree with me on that, too), but...

039: PEOPLE

“So why zeelite stuff?” I ask Tal over a breakfast of preserved oats and two-day-old bread. Adin has been banned from strenuous activities like kneading dough by the doctors so that his muscles and the skin and synnerves for his new artificial foot can heal.

“Um, because it looks awes...

4.86: Practical Justice

“It, uh, it… what?”

“Well, that was a fairly major political complication that was quite neatly resolved by simply giving up Kylie. Now, governments don’t tend to take drastic actions in petty revenge, but they do have a tendency to work to eliminate dangers. Your friend proved he...

Behind the Keyboard -- The Magistae

4.85: The Door

The stone key felt unnaturally heavy in my pocket as I headed to the medical ward. Unnaturally bulky, too. I kept having visions of someone finding it in my pocket and figuring out what I was doing and…

That was absurd, obviously. People didn’t just go around searching my pockets, and s...