Voltage

CODA Knows

Hunter read the four words twice. he handed the phone back to Wire and stood in the cracked concrete of the switching station and thought about what it meant. CODA was the city's infrastructure monitoring division he knew the name the way anyone who worked industrial jobs knew it. They audited power consumption, flagged grid irregularities, and passed anything they could not explain to whichever federal desk handled unexplained things. They were not investigators. They were analysts. But analysts had chains of command, and chains of command had people at the top who made decisions about what to do with information like this.

"How much does your contact know?" Hunter asked.

"He knows I pulled the grid logs. He does not know why." Wire pocketed the phone. "He flagged me as a courtesy. He will not do it again."

"So CODA has the surge data."

"They have four readings. The Vantage accident reading, the residential spike on Drewe Street, the scrubland, and the underpass." Wire looked at the floor. "They do not have tonight. This station has been off the grid for two years. Nothing here reports to anything."

Hunter looked at the stripped connection points on the walls. Dead lines running to nowhere. That was the only reason tonight had not added a fifth entry to someone's case file.

"They will connect the Vantage reading to me," Hunter said. "My name is already on the incident report."

"Probably."

"So they have a name and a location pattern."

"They have a name and a pattern that starts at your workplace and moves outward from there over six days." Wire picked up his jacket from the floor where he had set it. "That is enough to open a file. It is not enough to do anything with yet."

Hunter walked to the entrance and looked out at the rail yard. The tracks were dark and empty in both directions. Somewhere north of them the city was lit up and running, people asleep in their houses, current moving through wires in the walls, grid logs updating every fifteen minutes with data that now included his name.

"How long," Hunter said. "Before a file becomes something else."

"Depends who picks it up." Wire came to stand beside him. "If it stays with CODA it moves slowly. They are analysts. They do not have field capacity. But if they pass it up the chain and it lands with the wrong desk, the timeline changes."

"What is the wrong desk?"

Wire was quiet for a moment. "There are federal contracts that cover anomalous energy events. Not weather. Not equipment. Human-generated." He looked at Hunter. "I have heard of two cases in the last four years where grid readings like yours were investigated and the investigation did not stay with CODA. I do not know the details. I know the people involved were not heard from publicly after."

Hunter looked at him.

"I am not telling you this to alarm you," Wire said. "I am telling you so you understand the speed this needs to move at. You do not have the luxury of taking months to figure this out."

Hunter already knew that. He had known it since the fence post in Gloria's backyard, if he was honest with himself. He had been moving fast since the accident. He needed to move faster.

"I need Dayo," Hunter said.

Wire nodded. "Call him tonight."

He called from the back room of the shop at one in the morning. Dayo picked up on the second ring, which meant he had not been sleeping either.

Hunter told him about CODA. He told him about the four readings, the case file, the timeline Wire had described. He did not tell him about the switching station or what had happened to the concrete floor. That was a different conversation for a different time.

Dayo listened without interrupting. When Hunter finished, there was a pause.

"Wire told you about the federal contracts," Dayo said. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"He's right to be concerned." Another pause. "I know someone at the Harwick Annex. Not well. We worked the same infrastructure project three years ago before she moved to federal. Her name is Renna Voss. She is an energy analyst."

"You want me to go to a federal analyst."

"I want you to consider it. Renna is not the problem. The problem is whoever sits above Renna. If we can get to her before the case file moves up her chain, we have more options than if we wait and let it move on its own."

Hunter sat on the rubber mat with his back against the workbench. The room was dark except for the green indicator lights on the row of batteries he had charged that morning. Nine green. Three dark.

"What does going to her look like," Hunter said. "Practically."

"It looks like you walking in with information about yourself before she has to come looking for it. That changes the dynamic. You are not a subject. You are a source."

"And if she decides I am a subject anyway."

"Then we are no worse off than we are right now, except we know faster." Dayo's voice was even. He was not trying to sell Hunter on the idea. He was laying it out the way he laid everything out — straight, with no decoration. "I think she is the kind of person who does the job correctly. I cannot guarantee that. I am telling you my read."

Hunter thought about it. He looked at the nine green lights on the batteries across the room.

"Set it up," he said. "But I go alone. You stay out of it until I know what she is."

"Agreed," Dayo said. "I will contact her in the morning."

He did not sleep. He spent the rest of the night on precision work with the batteries, then graduated to a more difficult problem Wire had set up before going to bed a row of exposed wire segments mounted on a non-conductive board, each one a centimeter apart, each one labeled. The task was to run current through a specific segment without activating the ones adjacent to it.

It required a different kind of control than the batteries. The batteries were large targets. The wire segments demanded that he narrow the output to something close to a point. He failed most of the night. By five in the morning he could hit a target segment two out of five times. That was not good enough. He kept working.

At six-thirty Wire came in, looked at the board, looked at Hunter, and handed him a protein bar and a bottle of water without comment.

"Dayo called me," Wire said. "Renna Voss will meet you today. Noon. Coffee place on Harwick Street, three blocks from the annex."

Hunter looked up.

"He moves fast when he decides to move," Wire said. He sat on the stool and studied the wire board. "Two out of five is not good enough for what you might need that kind of precision for."

"I know."

"What's the failure pattern."

"I overcorrect on the narrow. I pull the output too tight and it collapses before it reaches the target. Or I hold the width wrong and it bleeds to the adjacent segment."

Wire leaned forward and looked at the board. "You're treating it like a physical action. Like you're reaching for something." He thought for a moment. "Try treating it like a decision. Not a reach. A choice. You are choosing the segment. The current goes where you choose. Not where your hand is pointed."

Hunter looked at the board. Then at his hand. He held the output at the base of his palm, chose the third segment from the left, and released.

The third segment lit. The second and fourth stayed dark.

He held it for three seconds and pulled back.

Wire looked at the board.

"Again," he said.

Hunter did it again. Third segment. Clean contact. Two seconds.

"Again."

Five times in a row. No bleed. No collapse.

Wire sat back. "There it is."

Hunter lowered his hand. He was breathing harder than the effort should have required. The output was not physically taxing the way lifting was taxing. It was closer to sustained concentration — the kind that left you flat and empty when it stopped.

"I need to eat before noon," Hunter said.

"I'll get food," Wire said. He stood and grabbed his keys. "And Hunter. When you sit down with this woman. Keep your hands on the table where she can see them. Do not discharge anything, not even small. You want her to see a person, not a problem."

Hunter nodded.

Wire left. Hunter sat alone with the wire board and ran the third segment four more times to make sure it was not luck.

It was not luck.

Renna Voss was already at the table when he arrived.

She was in her mid-thirties, with short natural hair and the kind of stillness that came from spending years reading data and understanding that most problems announced themselves if you were patient enough to wait. She had a coffee in front of her and nothing else on the table. No files. No tablet. She had not brought paperwork to this meeting, which told Hunter she was treating it as a conversation, not a deposition.

He sat down across from her and put his hands flat on the table the way Wire had told him to.

She looked at his hands. Then at his face.

"Dayo says you work industrial," she said.

"I did. Vantage Industrial. Until six days ago."

"I know about the accident." She said it without any particular weight. Not to show him she had done her research and not to make him feel surveilled. Just a fact being placed on the table so they could move past it. "I also know about the grid readings."

"How many do you have."

"Four. I pulled the full log this morning after Dayo contacted me." She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. "The Vantage reading I can explain there was a discharge event and it logged. The three after it I cannot explain with any equipment fault." She looked at him steadily. "Do you want to tell me what is generating them or do you want me to guess."

Hunter looked at her. He had been trying since the phone call with Dayo to figure out what version of the truth to give her and how much of it to hold back. Sitting across from her now, he decided the calculation was wrong. Partial information was still a liability. It left her with gaps she would fill with assumptions, and her assumptions might be worse than the reality.

He told her the full version. The accident. The hospital monitor. Gloria's house. The charger, the bulb, the mattress. The fence post and the neighbor's breaker. Leaving. The underpass and the Ashline crew. The scrubland tests. Wire. The battery rows. The wire board. He did not tell her about the switching station. He was not ready to tell anyone about the switching station.

She listened without writing anything down. When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

"Show me something small," she said. "Not enough to affect anything in this room. Just enough that I know this is not a story."

Hunter looked at the table between them. He placed his right index finger on the surface and ran a current through it just enough to make the wood warm to the touch at the contact point. Not enough to damage anything. Not enough to affect the lighting or the electronics in the room.

Renna placed her hand flat on the table an inch from his finger. She felt the warmth. She lifted her hand and looked at the surface.

"Okay," she said. She picked up her coffee. "Here is what I can tell you. The case file is mine right now. I opened it at medium priority yesterday. At medium priority it sits in my queue for up to three weeks before mandatory escalation. I can reclassify the four readings as equipment variance and close the file. That removes your name from active monitoring and gives you time."

"And in exchange," Hunter said.

"I am not asking for an exchange." She said it flatly, without offense. "I am telling you what I can do. Whether I do it depends on whether I think you are a danger to the grid or to people on it."

Hunter looked at her. "What would convince you either way."

"You just told me the full situation voluntarily before I had enough information to compel anything. That is not what a person does if they are planning to use this destructively." She set her coffee down. "I have been watching infrastructure anomalies for two years. The ones that end badly start with concealment. You came to me. That matters."

Hunter was quiet for a moment. He was not used to that logic being applied to him.

"There is something else," he said. "Wire the man helping me he mentioned federal contracts that handle anomalous human energy events. He said people who fell under those contracts were not heard from after."

Renna's expression did not change but something behind it shifted. A tightening, small and controlled.

"I am aware of the contracts," she said. "I cannot discuss the details. What I can tell you is that if your case file escalates past my level, I lose control of where it goes." She looked at him directly. "Close the file now, and it never escalates."

Hunter looked at her hands on the table. Then at his own.

"Close it," he said.

She nodded once. She picked up her phone, opened an application, and made three entries he could not see from across the table.

"Done," she said. "The four readings are reclassified. Your name is removed from active monitoring." She put the phone face-down. "That is three weeks, maybe four. After that the reclassification will be reviewed automatically and if there are new readings in the system by then, someone above me will look at the full picture."

"I understand."

"Then I suggest you use the time well." She stood, picked up her coffee, and looked at him one more time. "And stay off the main grid. Whatever you are doing to practice find somewhere that does not report to the city utility network."

She left without waiting for a response.

Hunter sat alone at the table for a moment. Then he picked up his phone and called Wire.

"It is done," he said. "Four weeks."

Wire was quiet on the other end. Then: "Dayo was right about her."

"Yes," Hunter said. He looked out the window at the street. Harwick was a different part of the city from where he had been living cleaner, newer, federal money in the infrastructure and the buildings. A place where the grid ran correctly and the safety certificates were current.

He thought about Vantage Industrial. The deferred maintenance report. The legal representative who had not asked how he was feeling.

He thought about the article he had saved on his phone.

He had four weeks. He intended to use all of them.

He stood up and left the coffee shop, hands in his jacket pockets, and walked back toward the fabrication district where Wire's shop was, where t

he wooden cot was, where the battery row and the wire board were waiting for him.

He had work to do.