Elemental Thief Page 9
The reason didn’t matter though. All that truly mattered was that this video proved Shen’s innocence. Now all Ridley had to figure out was what to do with it. If she had Lilah’s skills, she’d broadcast it anonymously across every device in the city. But she didn’t, and Lilah had made it clear she wasn’t getting involved any further.
Movement near the window startled Ridley a second before she felt pressure on her feet. She snatched her legs up toward her chest and grabbed the laptop as she looked across the bed, her heart beating suddenly, wildly. But it was only a cat. A cat with … four ears? A chill raced up Ridley’s spine as she looked at the second pair of ears directly behind the first. The cat turned its head toward her, and when its eyes met hers—eyes that glowed magic-blue—she knew for sure. This was a creature from the wastelands. An animal mutated by magic. She’d seen some of them before—the occasional blue-eyed rat scurrying across the street at night; birds that flew over the wall, squawking and spitting magic before the drones shot them down—but she’d never had one inside her home before.
She set the laptop aside, being careful not to bump the flash drive, and climbed off the bed. “Go on! Out!” She shooed the cat toward the window. It hissed at her, and an electric blue spark flew from its mouth. Ridley caught the magic in her hand and absorbed it before it could turn her duvet to water or light it on fire. Her eyes darted to the window to make sure no drone was hovering outside. “Out!” she repeated, motioning toward the window again. The cat leaped away, and as it landed on the outer windowsill, Ridley’s hand swooped down, her magic shutting the window in an instant. She leaned across the bed and tugged the curtains closed. “Darn creepy animal,” she muttered. She had nothing against cats, but a magic-mutated one would only get her into trouble. Hopefully it wandered into someone else’s neighborhood.
Perching on the edge of the bed, she pulled her laptop closer, her thoughts racing once more. She needed to get this video out there for everyone to see. No doubt someone important would claim this version was fake and the doctored one was the original, but hopefully it would throw enough doubt on the whole situation that Shen wouldn’t wind up convicted of murder. She could send it to some of the news networks, or upload it to all the social feeds. Or both. But it needed to come from someone else’s computer and someone else’s accounts. Someone with influence. Someone the public would believe.
She played the video again, ignoring the fact that she should be dressed and ready to open the store by now. As she watched Archer standing there with his hands up, staring at the man dying on the ground in front of him while Mrs. Longbourne screamed silently from the sidelines, she realized she knew exactly who should be the one to share this footage.
13
Ridley’s mind remained fixed on the flash drive hiding in her pocket as she paced Kayne’s Antiques for most of the morning. Even while cleaning the graffiti someone had decided to decorate their front door with during the night, she couldn’t turn her thoughts away from the one piece of evidence proving her friend wasn’t a murderer. She scrubbed away every letter of the word ‘magicist’—a slur that showed up on the exterior of their building at least once every few months—and went back inside the store to continue her pacing.
By the time Dad returned around midday, she was itching to leave. She told him she was heading out to Meera’s, which was, in fact, partly true. She would go to Meera’s straight after sharing the video that was currently burning a figurative hole in her pocket. She kissed Dad’s cheek, then hurried upstairs to grab her jacket with the hood.
Half an hour later, she was inside the Davenports’ apartment. Magic made it ridiculously easy. She found Mrs. Davenport sitting primly on the edge of a couch engrossed in something on her commscreen, which definitely wasn’t ideal. After confirming that no one else was home, Ridley hid in the guest bathroom for a while, wondering whether to risk going into Archer’s room when it was possible his mother could walk in at any moment. Fortunately, after about ten minutes, Mrs. Davenport asked the home auto system to send one of their cars out to the front of the building, and then she left.
Ridley listened to the beep of the security system arming itself, but decided not to bother with disarming it this time. She was invisible as she left the bathroom, so none of the beams protecting the artifact collection would detect her. Instead, she headed straight for the passageway and the bedrooms. As she neared the room belonging to Archer, she relaxed and let herself become visible. There were no cameras or beams in this part of the home. She remembered Lilah giving her a tour of the apartment years ago, pointing out every security device and then telling Ridley, “But bedrooms are private obviously. Mom didn’t want robots watching her in this part of the house.”
She entered Archer’s bedroom, which was a lot tidier than she remembered it being years ago when she spent so much of her time in this apartment. Almost everything inside this room had changed, but it was definitely still his. She caught herself thinking, It smells like him, before reminding herself what a weird thing that was to notice. With an involuntary shiver, she hurried to the sleek white desk and the screen that sat on top of it. With one finger, she tapped the surface of the desk where the faint outline of a keyboard was visible. The keyboard and screen both lit up, the screen displaying nothing but a background forest scene. No password, Ridley thought with relief. If it was Lilah’s computer she was trying to use, she doubted she would have been as lucky.
She pulled the chair forward and sat. Then she swiped her forefinger in an upward motion across the screen. She scrolled through the various apps until she located the social feeds collection, then opened the top one. Next, she removed the flash drive from inside her jacket, reached behind the screen, and plugged the flash drive in. She located the file and began the upload. Within seconds, it was sitting there in the preview window, waiting for Ridley to write a caption to go with it.
She sucked in a breath. Then she lowered her hands to the keyboard and began typing.
This may be a mistake, but I can’t keep quiet about it any longer. I can’t live with the guilt of knowing an innocent guy is taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. So here it is. Unaltered. The video showing what really happened in Demmer District three nights ago.
Ridley leaned back and read the message once more. Then she reached toward the screen, her finger hovering near the share button. Lilah would hate her for this, especially after she’d gone to the trouble of tracking down this video for Ridley. Archer would be furious too, though he wouldn’t know who to direct his fury at—unless Lilah told him. But the Davenport siblings had done enough to ruin Ridley’s chance at a normal life after the Cataclysm that messing with theirs didn’t bother her too much. And the public already knew Archer was in the alley at the time of the murder. This video didn’t change that. If anything, the way Ridley had written the post made Archer come across as the good guy in all of this. The guy who wanted the truth to be made known. The guy who wanted to save an innocent person from a life in prison.
It was too bad Archer Davenport was pretty much the opposite of that kind of guy.
With that final bitter thought, Ridley tapped the share button. She watched as the video popped up at the top of the feed. Then she opened Archer’s email, typed in the various news channel contact details she’d looked up while pacing the antique store that morning, and forwarded the video to them with the same message.
Then she stood and pushed the chair back in. She pulled her sleeve down over her right hand and wiped the fabric across the computer screen and over the smooth surface of the keyboard to remove any trace of her fingerprints. Finally, she stepped out of the room and pulled the door back to the exact position it had been in when she arrived.
She turned, magic pulsing through her veins, her skin glowing blue for a moment before she vanished entirely. Then she moved down the passage, her invisible heart thumping a little too fast at the thought of what she’d just done, and made her way out of the penthouse.
“Did she change her mind?” Meera asked the moment she opened her door about half an hour later and saw Ridley standing there.
“Who?” Ridley asked.
“You know, the person who was supposed to help us last night. The person you said turned out to be a gigantic coward.”
“Um … I’m not sure.” Ridley walked past Meera. “I sent her a message this morning pleading with her. I figured I’d wait until the end of the day to see if it made any difference.” She walked into the kitchen and stopped at the sight of the commpad, laptop, notepaper and pens on the kitchen table. “What’s going on here? Wait, are you doing schoolwork already?”
“Yes!” Meera hurried to the table with a panicked look on her face. “Didn’t you see the net-mail from Wallace?”
“Uh … no?”
“Apparently we were supposed to read every book on the prescribed list during summer break. I thought we only had to read these two.” Meera held up her commpad and showed Ridley two book covers. “So obviously I read those, but I’ve barely started on the others.”
“Well, you’re not alone.” Ridley picked up the notebook and examined the list of book titles Meera had written down. Only the top two titles had a tick next to them. “I’m pretty sure everyone else thought we only had to read these first two on the list.”
“Anyway, so I’ve started reading this one—” Meera pointed to the third title on the list “—but I can barely concentrate thinking about what Shen must be going through right now.”
Ridley’s eyes moved to the fourth title. “Okay, I can start reading one of the others while you carry on with the one you’ve started. Then we can summarize for each other.” She knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate well either wondering what was going on with the video she’d posted, but she’d already decided to ignore it until the story made it onto the news.
“Ugh, I know this is super weird for me to say,” Meera said, staring dismally at her commpad, “but I don’t want to be reading right now. We were supposed to meet Shen at the indoor wall this afternoon. I was even kinda looking forward to it. I can’t believe things can change so drastically in just a few days.”
Ridley put the notepad down. “We can still go if you want.”
Meera rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t looking forward to it that much. You know it’s more your thing than mine. I only started ’cause you guys were making me feel left out.”
Ridley couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, I know.” The indoor sports center had begun as a community project to keep kids from the city’s poorer districts off the street and out of trouble. Shen loved climbing from the start and continued going, even after many of his friends lost interest. When Ridley started at Wallace and was so unhappy to discover all her old friends still ignoring her, Shen convinced her to give indoor climbing a go. She was surprised to find that she enjoyed it. She liked relying on her own body’s strength and not her magic, and it gave her something to work toward. At first it was all about climbing a little higher every time. Then, once she’d mastered climbing all the way to the top, it became about climbing faster. Beating her own best time. Beating Shen—something she hadn’t managed to achieve yet, though she assured herself it would happen.
These days, Shen was a volunteer instructor at the sports center. All the younger kids loved him. They must be so confused, Ridley thought, seeing Shen’s face on social feeds and on the news updates that streamed across the city’s public screens. Seeing him accused of murder. I’ll get you out of that jail, she promised him. She had to do it as much for those kids as for herself, Meera, and Shen’s family.
“So yeah, let’s try the reading thing,” Meera said with a sigh. “It has to be done. I’ll try harder to focus and not think about Shen too much.”
They sat on the couch, Meera reading her commpad and Ridley reading the one title that Meera had an actual paper copy of, mainly so she could put her commscreen aside and resist the urge to scroll through the social feeds. The minutes ticked slowly by, and no one messaged Ridley or Meera to ask if they’d seen the video. Meera’s siblings didn’t say anything about it. Ridley’s dad didn’t call her.
A paranoid corner of her mind was afraid someone might have made the video disappear. Or that every news channel had been secretly threatened and decided not to broadcast it. But she pushed her worries away and tried to focus on the book. She lasted another fifteen minutes before Anika ran out of her bedroom. “Did you see this?” she said to Meera, her eyes shining as she held a commscreen toward her sister.
“Is that mine?” Meera asked with a frown.
“Yeah, it kept buzzing on your bed. You’ve got all these messages from one of Shen’s brothers.”
“And you looked at them?” Meera demanded, snatching the commscreen. “Didn’t we just have a discussion about privacy?”
“Just look!” Anika insisted.
Ridley’s heart sped up as Meera tapped her commscreen. Those messages had better be about the video she posted, otherwise—
“Oh wow,” Meera said. “Wow, wow, wow. Rid, look at this!”
“What?” Ridley let the book fall shut and leaned over to look at the screen of Meera’s device. Sure enough, there was the video with Archer’s caption above it. Below, more than three hundred comments had already been added. “Holy crap,” Ridley murmured, trying her best to look more surprised than relieved. “So that’s what really happened.”
“Awesome, right?” Anika said. “I’m gonna tell Triven.” She turned and ran from the room.
“This is proof,” Meera said, her eyes bright and her smile wide. “This shows he wasn’t there. He’s going to be free!” She threw her arms around Ridley and hugged her tightly before pulling back and staring at the commscreen again. “Wow, so they seriously doctored this original video to pretend Shen was there. I mean, this is the mayor’s son, right? No one knew until now that he had anything to do with this whole thing. Wait, but what if the cops say this video is the fake?” Her face fell as she looked up. “What if they think Archer’s lying?”
“Um, I guess that’s possible,” Ridley said, pretending it was the first time the thought had occurred to her. “But this is Archer Davenport we’re talking about. He has the money and connections to make sure the police believe him. And even if they don’t, hopefully this video will throw enough doubt on the whole situation that they won’t have enough reason to keep Shen in custody any longer.” Ridley finally allowed herself to pick up her own commscreen. “I wonder if it’s in the news yet.” She located the live streaming feed of one of the news channels she’d contacted. “It is. Look.” She leaned over and held the commscreen so both she and Meera could watch as Archer Davenport walked out of Aura Tower with his father on one side and someone Ridley didn’t recognize—one of his lawyers, most likely—on the other. They stopped at the top of the steps and looked down at a crowd of reporters.
“Wow, people don’t waste time in this city, do they,” Meera said. “He posted that video, what, two hours ago? And already he’s talking to reporters about it.”
Anxiety twisted Ridley’s insides as she watched Archer. Don’t you dare deny it, she thought. She managed an uneasy laugh and said, “He probably didn’t have a choice. His father probably told him to get out there and make a statement about it instead of hiding behind the social feeds.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Behind her back, Ridley crossed her fingers as Archer smiled—a poor imitation that in no way resembled the real thing—and shouted above the reporters’ questions. “Yes, I did post that video. It was sent to me by someone at the Lumina City Drone Surveillance Department. Someone who wanted me to know that the other video—the video with Shen Lin—wasn’t real. It had been cleverly manipulated. This person at the Drone Surveillance Department was afraid to go public with it, but I wasn’t. I realized Shen Lin might be innocent, and I couldn’t live with the guilt. I had to make the truth known. A digital forensics team has begun examining bot
h videos, and so far, it seems the representative of the Drone Surveillance Department was correct. The video I released today is the unaltered version.” The reporters raised their voices once more, but Archer shouted, “That’s all I have to say. If you have further questions, you can direct them to my lawyer.”
Ridley exhaled slowly. Great story, Archer, she thought. I wonder who came up with it.
“I’m so happy,” Meera said, falling back against the couch and hugging a cushion. “Shen’s going to be okay. I hope they release him today. I can’t wait to see him again. Even if the Wallace dinner finishes late. I don’t care. I just want to see him and make sure he’s okay.” Ridley tilted her head, watching Meera closely as something occurred to her. “What?” Meera asked. A flush rose to her cheeks. “Why are you staring at me?”
“You like him, don’t you? I mean you really like him. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“What?” Meera rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so silly. This is Shen we’re talking about. Our friend. He’s not … like …” She waved her hand in the air as whatever words she was looking for escaped her.
“Not like what?” Ridley asked with a grin.
“You know. Not like boyfriend material.”