Chapter 10
“Edgar,” I whisper. “Keep an eye on Bud. If he notices me, I want a heads-up.”
“Righto,” he replies, and flies toward the security office.
I slip from my hiding spot behind the plants and begin to crawl across the marble floor. It’s cool against my sweaty fingers. Without the air-conditioning, the August heat has begun to seep into the building.
Hannah Vale left the dead security guard where he fell. I scurry toward him, my jaw clenching. I’ve never liked dead things—not flowers, not roadkill, not the frogs we were supposed to dissect in eighth grade. I made my lab partner do it.
But this can’t be avoided.
I kneel beside the security guy. Matthew.
His name is Matthew. I remember the flash of grief in Nonna’s face when she spoke of him.
She’s a good judge of character, which means he was probably a decent man.
His eyes are open and glassy, his lips slightly parted.
Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet, so he still looks uncomfortably alive.
I try not to look at his face. Instead I reach for his belt. It’s one of those industrial-heavy affairs carried by cops and private security guards. Clipped to it are a flashlight and—
“Bingo,” I hiss as I find a can of pepper spray and a baton. I’m not trained with guns or knives, but I can shoot a spray can and hit someone with a stick just fine. I take both. I turn to leave, but something makes me pause.
Matthew deserves better than to be scavenged and abandoned. Even if it’s irrational, I can’t just leave him here.
A dark hoodie is tied around his waist. It’s not a sheet, but I want to cover him with something. I carefully pry it free, then give it a shake to straighten out the fabric.
As I do, something falls out of the pocket and clinks to the floor.
I look down. A gold ring. He must have put it in his pocket and forgotten it there when he tied the sweatshirt above his belt.
Carefully, I pick it up. At first, I think it’s a wedding band. It has the clean lines of one. But the moment I touch it, I realize my mistake. This thing is far, far too heavy to be simple gold.
It’s ringware.
This is the difference between ringware and an electron-ink tattoo: Rings are designed to interface with one’s technology.
They’re temporary and cheap—but the real price is that they’re far less secure.
Electron-ink tattoos can only be deactivated upon death.
They’re linked up with all the information a person holds most dear: social security, bank accounts, addresses.
Matthew’s electron-ink tattoo vanished within a minute of his death—and with it, all of the passwords and passkeys that someone might have taken from him.
But a fingerprint is all too easily stolen.
I flick the ring to activate it and reach for Matthew’s hand. When I slip the ring over his finger, it beeps softly. Awaiting a command. With a grimace, I twist Matthew’s fingers in a familiar gesture to open up new Bluetooth connections.
Instantly, a pop-up in my visor announces a new ring available. “Thank you, Matthew,” I breathe.
A few swipes of my fingers and I manage to change the ring’s security passcode to my own fingerprint.
The layout of the building spreads out before me. Blueprints layer over my vision—pipes hidden in the walls, a series of hallways, brilliant outlines of doors that require authorization.
This ringware is Matthew’s master key to the building. And now I have it.
“Thank you,” I whisper, touching his arm. “And I’m sorry.”
I half crawl, half shuffle toward the security office. Bud is still there, diligently typing.
The keyboard is the manual kind, and its loud clack-clack-clacking covers the sound of my approach.
I have spent enough time in this job to recognize dangerous people. Dangerous people—truly dangerous people—don’t cackle or twirl their metaphorical mustaches. Most of them don’t look or act differently than anyone else. But even so, they’re recognizable.
Have you ever met someone and felt a jolt in your stomach like when you miss a step on a staircase? Or a prickle of awareness at the back of your neck? Have you ever felt like you were being watched? Odds are, you were in the presence of someone dangerous.
Humans are apex predators now, but our bodies retain those prey instincts.
Looking at Bud, I do not feel that awareness. He looks like an overconfident hacker.
Honestly, he reminds me of … me.
Which makes this next step much easier.
“Hi there,” I say brightly, closing the office door behind me. And then I pepper-spray him.
He launches out of his chair like a cat with its tail on fire. His knees clip the desk and he falls over backward, the chair crashing down with him. He tries to stagger upright, clawing at his stinging eyes.
A nice person would’ve let him have a moment.
I whack him upside the head with the baton. He falls again, moaning and dazed and half blinded—but still alive. I look him over. There’s no ringware on his fingers, no visor, and no weapons.
Holding the baton in one hand, I use the other to scour the desk for anything useful. There’s an electronic picture frame featuring Matthew and two young kids, a half-empty coffee cup, a ball of rubber bands, a permanent marker, and a half-used roll of duct tape.
I seize Bud’s arms and quickly duct-tape them behind his back. Then I do the same for his ankles. At least now he can’t run.
“What the hell,” he rasps.
“If you scream, I will knock you unconscious and dump you in the pool,” I say pleasantly.
“Who are you?” Bud gazes at me, squinting as though trying to focus through immense pain. He snorts—and then he hacks up a gob of saliva, spitting it on the floor.
I skip back. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”
“You pepper-sprayed me in the face,” he says accusingly.
“You’re a murderer,” I snap back.
He tries to sit up, a difficult task with his arms bound behind him. “Oh, no. I killed no one. I am strictly here for tech support.”
“Oh, yes,” I retort. “You came here to commit a crime and someone ended up dead. That’s textbook felony murder.”
I should know.
He snorts again. “What are you, the world’s youngest lawyer?” He blinks. “Where did you come from?”
“I’m asking the questions here.” I point the baton at him.
Bud appears unimpressed. “You’re a teenager with a stick. You’re not gonna kill me.”
“I could,” I say. “I’ve got full immunity at the moment.”
The problem with employing criminals is that …
well, we’re criminals. Which can cause problems when we’re working on behalf of a federal agency.
If ISD ends up with a serial killer gleefully going on a new spree, that would be bad for their image.
So part of the deal for any wraith is that if we commit a crime—outside of our work with ISD—then we can have our contract yanked.
On assignments, we get a certain amount of flexibility.
We can weave the line of legality … but we can’t just pole-vault over it.
Things like murder are still frowned upon.
But for this job, the only thing that matters is retrieving that mysterious government property. Prefect made that perfectly clear.
“Wait…” Bud frowns and I can see the thoughts running behind his reddened eyes. “You—you’re a wraith.”
I don’t know how to react to that.
“I—uh,” I say eloquently.
“You’re working with them.” He squints at me. “You’re so young. I thought they didn’t recruit that young. Makes sense, though, with this job.”
For some reason, I always thought an interrogation would be difficult.
“Well, of course,” I say. “They needed me for this. Uh, job. Because I’m young.
” Even as I speak, my brain is racing. A lot of people don’t believe in wraiths.
We’re one part boogeyman and one part action hero.
Those who are in the know look at us like we’re badly trained attack dogs.
That I find more understandable—after all, most wraiths are felons.
Those not in the know think we’re a rumor, a conspiracy theory.
So why the hell is Bud unsurprised to find a wraith in this building?
“How much do you know?” I ask. Might as well be blunt.
He gives me a flat look. “Enough. Hannah’s not exactly forthcoming but I’m in charge of pen-testing.”
Penetration testing. So he’s used to testing systems for weaknesses. Nearly every major cybersecurity company employs them as white hat hackers. It makes sense that a bunch of cyberterrorists would have their own.
“I checked out this building before we came here,” says Bud. “I know your people picked this location because of its back door.” He shrugs. “Not a bad plan, but we already secured it.”
A secret back door? I have no idea what he is talking about. But I don’t want him to realize how clueless I am.
“Tell your boss to cooperate,” says Bud, sounding almost earnest. “No one has to get hurt.”
I laugh—but it’s a jagged sound void of amusement. “The security guy might argue with that if he weren’t, well, dead.”
“No one else has to get hurt,” amends Bud.
I look at him. At this twenty-something self-proclaimed computer genius with his university sweatshirt and lanky build. If my life went according to plan, I could have been very much like him.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “You and the rest of Radiocastration.”
“Ratiocination,” he corrects me.
“Radioministration,” I say airily. Getting the name right affords them a certain amount of respect—and they don’t deserve it. “If you wanted people to remember the name, you should’ve picked something catchier.”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t try again. “This blackout. Did you even stop to ask why it’s happening?”
Of all the answers I expect, this wasn’t on the list.
“Public safety power shutoffs prevent stray sparks from causing a fire,” I answer. “And because the dam can’t draw enough power right now with the drought.”