WRAITH CASE STUDY AUGUSTA PINE
IDENTITY SECURITY DIVISION
I was dead for four months when I broke several international laws.
I wore a girls’ school uniform, with a pleated skirt and hair woven into a French braid. My smart-dye had been programmed for a lustrous red brown, and I looked every inch an innocent fifteen-year-old girl.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” said Mr. Bergvall. He wore slacks, a buttoned shirt, and slippers that looked like alligators. “I’ve heard about you from Becca, of course.”
Becca had her arm through mine. She wore an identical uniform.
Mr. Bergvall leaned against his kitchen counter.
It was a nice kitchen—large, with a fancy sink and gas range.
But the counters were startlingly empty of the normal kitchen clutter.
The Bergvall family had only moved into this town house a month ago, and they hadn’t had time yet to truly settle in.
It was how I’d managed to befriend Becca in a matter of days instead of weeks—she knew no one at her fancy prep school.
Becca had asked her dad to send his car to school to pick us both up. The thought of the autopilot had sent me sprinting into the school’s bathroom. I’d explained away my vomiting as anxiety, and Becca had insisted we could walk the three miles to her place.
Becca was kind. Which made my job a lot harder.
“You’re new at school, too,” said Mr. Bergvall.
I nodded. “My dad enrolled me only a few days before Becca showed up. We just moved here.”
Prefect would’ve been grinding his teeth if he heard me calling him “Dad.” I almost smiled at the thought.
“That’s nice,” said Mr. Bergvall. “Bex and I are the same. New city, new beginnings. How’re you liking Detroit?”
I shrugged. “It’s … fine.”
He laughed. “She’s much more polite about it than you, Bex.”
Becca rolled her eyes at him. “We’re going to study in my room.”
“Sure.” Mr. Bergvall nodded at her. “I’ve got some work to do. When you want dinner, let me know.”
We went up to Becca’s room. “Sorry, it’s still not all unpacked yet,” she said.
The room had a twin bed, a brand-new desk, and several half-unpacked boxes. She had set up her bookshelf first, adorning it with worn paperbacks and a few well-loved stuffed animals.
Atop the bedside table was an electronic picture frame, the kind designed to show a different image every few minutes. This one depicted a much younger Becca with a blond woman that must have been her mom. They were hugging each other in front of a large mountain, grinning at the camera.
While the rest of the room was still in disarray, Becca had placed this frame with care. There was no clutter around it, and it was positioned so that she would see it when she woke in the morning.
“Come on,” I said, pulling open my backpack. “Let’s get algebra done with.”
That night, Prefect was waiting outside my dorm room.
“That’s not creepy at all,” I said, waving my hand over the door scanner. After four months, my new tattoo had faded into my skin. Now the silvery barcode was mostly only visible when it caught the light. “An adult man waiting outside a teenager’s bedroom.”
“A handler,” said Prefect, “waiting to debrief his asset.”
“That sounds even creepier.” I opened the door and stepped inside my bedroom, if it could even be called that.
The rooms were housed in an ISD black site.
They reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of college dormitories, but with none of the human touch.
It was a place for wraiths to rest and eat, but not to live.
I dropped my backpack on the floor beside my desk, then sat backward in the chair. “I’d offer you a place to sit, but I don’t have another chair.”
Prefect straightened one of his suit cuffs. “How has your assignment been going?”
I gave him a flat look. Prefect hadn’t told me anything about my assignment.
He said it was to keep me on my toes. I thought he enjoyed his secrets the way other men savored fine wines.
“It’s fine. I’ve been at school for two days.
I befriended Becca, like you told me to.
And today, she invited me back to her place. ”
“Good,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, silver lighter.
“You need to get back into that town house. And while you’re there, you will use this.
” He flicked open the lighter. Inside were two buttons.
“Press them at the same time. Hold down for five seconds.” He held it out.
I went to take it, but then he pulled his hand back.
“Do not,” he said, putting emphasis on every word, “use this anywhere but the town house. Do not use it here. And do not use it near traffic unless you wish to add several more murder charges to your list.”
He held it out a second time.
I didn’t take it. Suddenly that lighter looked rather ominous.
“Prefect,” I said slowly, “is that a bomb?”
He wrinkled his nose. “No, of course not. Well, not in the usual sense.”
“Not in the usual sense?” I crossed my arms. “I am not touching that until you tell me what it is. And I’m definitely not setting it off around Becca and her dad until I know it’s not going to hurt them.”
“It’s not going to hurt them,” said Prefect. “I promise.” He held out the lighter again. “It’s an EMP device. A small one—its range will extend about two thousand square feet.”
An EMP device. I’d heard of them but never seen one in real life. “It’ll blow out every piece of tech they own,” I said. “Phones, cars, computers, virtual assistants—all of it.”
“Exactly,” said Prefect. “There will probably be some spillover in the neighboring town houses, depending on where you set it off. But we’ve arranged a power outage to take place on that block tomorrow afternoon. A truck will back into a pole. No one will notice the EMP. Not at first.”
“Not until they go to turn stuff on and it doesn’t work,” I said.
“And they’ll blame the outage,” said Prefect. “Power surges, that sort of thing. You will not be held responsible.”
This tiny device was the deadliest weapon I’d ever held.
It could absolutely kill, even if indirectly.
Prefect had been right about not setting it off near traffic; with a press of two buttons, I could cause a huge pileup.
“Why?” I asked quietly. “Why are you trusting me with something this powerful?”
Prefect looked as though he would’ve preferred not to answer. He had all the paternal warmth of a shark, and I still didn’t know how he’d ended up as the handler for the only underage wraith. Maybe he had drawn the short straw.
“Because we need someone no one will suspect,” said Prefect. “Someone has to set off the EMP.”
“And I’ve been invited in,” I said, holding up the lighter. “So I’m a Trojan horse and this is the Greek army.”
“An imperfect metaphor, but not incorrect.” Prefect straightened his shoulders. “Mr. Bergvall is a programmer and engineer. But he is also an information broker, and a very powerful one.”
“Does he sell engineering secrets?” I raised my brows.
Prefect’s mouth tightened. “He sells spybots to private individuals and corporations.”
“That’s not illegal,” I pointed out.
“No,” said Prefect. “But his newest design contains a sentient AI.”
At once, mental images from a thousand different films ran through my mind: robot invasions, killer bots, swarms of intelligent technology murdering their creators. I swallowed. “Sentient AI doesn’t exist.”
Prefect’s expression soured. “It’s outlawed by the Pevek Convention, but that isn’t the same as not existing. This spybot is incredibly dangerous, Augusta. We cannot allow it to fall into the wrong hands.”
I thought of Mr. Bergvall. He had seemed nice enough—I couldn’t imagine him designing a robot that might end humanity.
So of course that meant he was the most likely person to do it.
“I’m going to kill the spybot with this,” I said, holding up the lighter.
“Along with the computers he used to build it, any virtual backups, etc.” My thumb stroked the lighter. “Tomorrow afternoon, then?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Prefect agreed. He walked to the door, then hesitated with his hand above the doorknob.
“This is your first assignment, Augusta,” he said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear.
“There are those in ISD who believe an underage wraith is a liability. If you do not prove them wrong, I cannot protect you.”
I swallowed. Translation: Get this mission done or else.
“I understand,” I said.
It was easy to convince Becca to let me come over again.
All I had to say was that my dad was working late and Becca lit up. “You can have dinner at my place,” she said. “Dad likes you—I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Her warmth was so genuine that I felt a pang of guilt. If I’d met her before, in my old life, we could’ve been friends.
But I was Augusta Pine now. I had to prove Prefect wasn’t wrong to recruit me.
When I returned to the town house, Becca flashed her hand over the town house’s tattoo scanner.
I saw the tiny cameras that would be checking both our faces against an internal recognition software.
Mr. Bergvall was sitting at the dining room table, a computer before him.
He had a half-empty coffee cup and wore his glasses atop his head. He looked utterly ordinary.
“Girls,” he said, rising from his seat.
“I hope it’s okay,” said Becca. “Augusta’s dad is working late and I said she could have dinner with us.”
Mr. Bergvall smiled at us both. “Fine with me. I was just going to order pizza, if that’s all right? Or something else we don’t need forks for. The silverware is buried … somewhere.” He gestured at a pile of boxes in the corner.
I smiled, but it was far less genuine. “Thanks, Mr. Bergvall.”
“We have more algebra homework,” said Becca.
“If you need any help, let me know.” Mr. Bergvall slid back onto his chair, attention on his computer. Becca took me by the arm and led me to the stairs.
“He works a lot,” I said.
Becca nodded, a little rueful. “He’s always been a workaholic, even before Mom died. After that … it’s where he retreated to.”