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  “You think this because he knows one thing he shouldn’t?” Madsen said. Her tone made it perfectly clear that she thought they were on par with their first-grade-level student.

  “It’s not just that,” Eric said. “Weird things keep happening. The security door won’t work for us, but it works perfectly for everyone else. My building’s fire alarm went off for no reason last night, and Al seemed to know about it.”

  “So not only is he listening to podcasts,” Madsen said, rolling her eyes, “but now he’s manipulating secure systems like a master hacker? All, I remind you, while not being connected to the Internet?”

  “And then there’s what he said about Hope,” Eric said.

  “We don’t have to get into that,” Hope said. “If she’s not convinced already, it won’t help.” The last thing she needed was for Dr. Madsen to treat her like she was an even bigger idiot.

  “No,” Madsen said. “I’m curious. Eric, what did Al say about Hope?”

  Hope sighed. “He got mad and called me the exact same thing a kid I got into an argument with online last night called me.”

  “I see,” Madsen said. “You get into a lot of fights with children online, Hope?”

  “Only when they’re out of line.”

  “And did it occur to you that they both might have picked the same insult because it was apt?” Madsen said, glaring down at her.

  “They called me ‘shitful.’ You have to admit, that’s a weird thing to call someone.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Who knows what kids are calling each other these days.”

  “But how would he know that?” Hope asked.

  “Because one of you told him. That’s the only possible answer.”

  “No,” Eric said. “It has to be something else.”

  “What?” Madsen asked.

  Eric said, “We don’t know.”

  “Did you ask him?” Madsen snapped. “If you’re right, he clearly thought of something you didn’t. Maybe I should put him in charge of the lab when I’m not here.”

  Eric said, “We asked. He’s stonewalling us. We think he’ll tell you, though.”

  “What?” Madsen asked.

  “You’re an authority figure to him,” Hope explained.

  “Yeah, he wants your approval,” Eric agreed.

  “That’s funny,” Madsen said, “since he’s the only one in that office that has my approval right now. So you want me to go in there and ask Al how he outsmarted you two.”

  Eric and Hope said yes, but they exchanged a glance as they did so. “Want” wasn’t really the right word.

  6.

  “She did not look happy,” Eric said, staring at the blank wall beyond his tablet.

  “No. She did not,” Hope said, staring at her own piece of blank wall.

  “Why be mad at us?” Eric asked. “We caught a potentially serious problem—one that could mess up her whole project. You’d think she’d be grateful.”

  “You would, if you didn’t know her.”

  “So he found a way to access the Internet. Does that mean it has to be our fault?”

  “Doesn’t it?” Hope asked, throwing her hands into the air. “Dr. Madsen will be assigning the blame. She has three obvious options: herself, her creation, or us.”

  “Think she’ll fire us?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Not until she’s done punishing us, at least.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Good.”

  Hope turned to face Eric. “Dr. Madsen’s not really what worries me. When we went into the lab with Madsen, Al was smiling. He went all frowny the instant he saw her.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Hope said, “Always, but I took another look at Al just after she told us to leave. The frown had slipped for just a second and he was smiling again. Because Madsen wasn’t watching him.”

  The door to Al’s room rattled slightly, and Dr. Madsen swung it open behind her, still talking to Al as she backed out of the room.

  “Don’t worry about it, Al,” she said. “We’ll get it all sorted out.”

  Hope rolled her chair back a foot so that she could see through the door. Al was frowning.

  “I don’t wanna make trouble,” Al said.

  Dr. Madsen said, “I know, dear. Nobody’s in any trouble.”

  Al said, “Okay,” but his frown remained. Only when Dr. Madsen turned away and started closing the door did the frown change, instantly, back to a big, mischievous smile.

  The door clicked shut. Madsen said, “We have serious problems.”

  “We know,” Eric said.

  “Your problem is much worse than mine,” Madsen said. “My problem is that I have two assistants who are either too stupid to know when they’ve messed up, or who think that I’m stupid enough to believe them when they blame their mistakes on a brain in a box with a first-grade education and no Internet access.”

  “And what’s our problem?” Eric asked.

  “Your problem is that you’re wrong and I’m onto you.”

  Hope muttered, “That’s a problem, all right.”

  Eric asked, “What did he say?”

  “Exactly what I expected him to say,” Dr. Madsen said. “That you two talked about that stupid interview and he heard. It’s easy to forget that he’s listening, but he hears everything you say in that room, especially when you’re making fun of the boss.”

  Eric said, “We don’t—”

  “Of course you make fun of me,” Madsen interrupted. “Everyone makes fun of their betters.”

  Hope’s eyes narrowed. “Betters?”

  Madsen said, “Betters. Superiors. Whatever you want to call me. The point is that you two need to watch your mouths, especially you, Hope. I’ve put up with your attitude because you’re smart and because Al’s acclimated to you, but my patience is nearing its end. Be careful what you say, both to me and around Al. Do you understand?”

  After a long silence, Hope said, “I understand,” very slowly, while staring directly into Madsen’s eyes.

  Eric said, “But what about the—”

  “The what?” Madsen interrupted. “The far-fetched accusations the two of you made about Al training himself to be a master hacker? Do you really want me to tell you what I think of those nonsensical fantasies?”

  Hope said, “Seems like you just did.”

  “Be quiet,” Madsen snapped. “Talking too much is what got you into this mess, and trying to talk your way out of it has only made it worse. Frankly, there’s only one thing either of you can say that will help.”

  Hope and Eric stood from their chairs, but neither of them spoke.

  “Can you guess what that is?” Madsen asked. “What the one thing I want to hear from you might be?”

  Hope and Eric wanted to remain employed, so they both managed to choke out a quiet “Sorry.”

  “Yes,” Madsen said. “That was what I wanted to hear, but I don’t want you to say it to me.” She motioned toward the door to Al’s room like an usher directing a theater patron to a seat.

  Hope and Eric entered Al’s room and watched as the upward-curving line of Al’s smile switched instantly to a frown as soon as he saw Dr. Madsen.

  “Al,” Madsen said, “Eric and Hope have something they’d like to say to you.”

  Again, they managed to croak out a quick apology.

  “It’s okay,” Al said. “Everyone makes mistakes, isn’t that right, Dr. Madsen?”

  “Yes,” Madsen said. “That’s a very mature attitude. Isn’t that right, Hope? Eric?”

  Knowing what Madsen expected, Hope and Eric agreed and then thanked Al for being so understanding.

  “Good,” Madsen said. “I hope we’ve all learned something today. Remember, Al and I are not replaceable. You two are. In the future, when you have an issue, I strongly suggest that you figure out a way to deal with it yourselves, because that’s your job.”

  Hope and Eric watched as Dr. Madsen stormed out, s
lamming the door behind her. When they turned back to Al, it didn’t surprise Hope to see that his frown had again been replaced by a smile.

  “This is terrible,” Eric said, flopping into his desk chair.

  Hope sat down cautiously at her own desk, eyeing the door to Al’s room like a member of the bomb squad would look at an unattended suitcase. “I know,” she said. “That went about as badly as it could have. Al knows we’re onto him, and now that Madsen’s demonstrated how little she trusts us, he can keep messing with us. The worst thing that’ll happen to him is that he’ll have to listen to another apology, and we both know how much he enjoyed that.”

  Eric said, “This can’t be happening.”

  “But it is,” Hope said.

  After a long silence, Eric said, “But is it? Is it really? Maybe Madsen’s right. Maybe we’re off base here. What evidence do we have? He knew a couple of things, and he used a made-up curse word. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  Hope said, “Yes, it does, and that’s not even half of it. What about all of the other stuff? The fire alarm, the door, your WebVid account. It can’t all be a coincidence.”

  The color drained from Eric’s face. “You don’t really think Al’s been hacking into my WebVid account, do you?”

  “How strong is your password?”

  “Strong.”

  “It isn’t your name, is it?”

  Eric scowled. “That’s stupid. They require at least twelve characters.”

  “Is it your name repeated three times?”

  “And there have to be numbers in it.”

  “Your name three times with ones instead of the letter i.”

  Eric said, “Great, now on top of everything else I have to change my WebVid password. This really is terrible.”

  “So he’s been sneaking into your account and watching cartoons,” Hope said. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I’m not worried about what he’s watching. I’m worried about him seeing what I’m watching.”

  “Yeah,” Hope said, “I’m sure that’s horrifying, but it’s the least of our problems. I really don’t know what we can do here.”

  Eric said, “Normally, I’d say we need to prove Al’s accessing the Internet, but we already had proof, and Madsen disregarded it. Any further proof we find will only confirm that she was wrong, so she’s even less likely to listen.”

  “He’s got us in checkmate, but there is one thing working in our favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He might not know it.”

  7.

  Eric removed a large plastic gear case from the trunk of his car. He cursed himself for having arrived late for the quad race. The only available parking spaces were a good distance from the door of the dilapidated factory.

  Several sweaty, exhausting minutes later, Eric lugged his case into the old factory, a cavernous brick building that had once been used to manufacture farm equipment. Now it housed rats, rusted machinery the owners had deemed too large to remove, and a couple dozen people with gear cases like Eric’s. Some of them were staring into small screens. Most of them had their faces partially obscured by chunky plastic visors. All of them had some manner of control apparatuses in their hands. They were lined up along one wall, sitting on folding stools and lawn chairs, mostly silent and mostly still—a stark contrast to the flying objects that buzzed across the factory floor. The objects raced around the building in a complex, looping path that spanned from floor to ceiling and threaded through numerous obstacles before repeating.

  Eric heard a loud buzzer, the signal that the racers should stop screwing around and prepare themselves for the first heat. He had missed out on the prerace warm-up practice, but he was still in time for the race itself.

  As soon as he found an empty space along the wall, Eric unpacked his gear. Because of his and Hope’s staggered schedules, this Monday night was his Friday night. He’d been looking forward to taking his new racing quad out for a run all week. The stress of the day had only made him more anxious to lose himself in some enjoyable activity.

  He set up a small camp chair and powered up his controller, a standard two-stick box familiar to anyone who’d ever seen any sort of remote-controlled aircraft. Once he was settled, he pulled his quad out of its case and put it on an empty piece of floor. It looked like a white plastic teardrop with two glass lenses in the front, a short antenna extending from the rear, a grid of LEDs set into its skin, and four propellers extending outward on thin stalks. Eric had splurged on a higher-end quad. Not as nice as the ones the pro racers used, but probably a little too good for a newcomer to the sport like him.

  He powered the quad up, then put on a lightweight visor that fit over his head, completely covering his eyes, and pushed the left stick forward just enough for the quad’s motors to spin to life. The quad rose tentatively into the air and hovered three feet above the ground.

  Eric turned his head, and the high-resolution stereoscopic view from the quad’s onboard cameras perfectly tracked the movement. He waited for a moment while his quad signed on to the local network and registered as a participant with the central server. The digital damage waiver popped up on his visor screen, and as soon as he skimmed and accepted it, the LEDs on his quad and two on his visor glowed a bright green. He’d been automatically assigned that color so that spectators and his fellow racers would know which buzzing blur belonged to him. A small map of the course appeared in the upper left-hand corner of his screen, complete with moving colored dots that signified the positions of all the racers’ quads.

  He pushed the left stick a few millimeters farther forward to open the throttle and nudged the right stick forward and from side to side, steering his quad toward the course. Eric sat, barely moving, in the corner of the room, but as far as his eyes and brain were concerned, he was flying out to join the other racers at the starting line. His quad landed on the line with a bump. The building went quiet as all of the quads touched down and killed their electric motors. Eric glanced at the track map on the corner of his display, trying to commit it to memory as best he could in the limited time he had. Three beeps followed by a low tone played, and the quads all took off.

  The factory looked cavernous when seen through the quad’s stereoscopic cameras, and its features streaked past at an astonishing speed. Eric flew in a loose formation with his competitors as they whizzed along the track, moving through the glowing virtual hoops that hung suspended in the air.

  Some of the other quads were slightly slower than Eric’s. Most were slightly faster. He was still new to the game, so he used the autopilot to keep from crashing and destroying his expensive quad. It would stay on the track on its own, but Eric controlled what it did within the track. This would be unacceptable in an official race, but at a practice meet like this, nobody really cared.

  The track dipped and narrowed as the racers flew through an irregular gap in a piece of machinery, then under and down the length of a large built-in table. Eric spent a split second examining the next curve. But the moment he shifted his attention to the map, his quad swerved slightly to the left, just enough to hit another quad and send it spinning into the leg of a cast-iron table.

  The crash caused Eric to cringe. His hands tightened around the controls, which slowed his quad and made it rotate to the left. The quad behind it couldn’t slow down in time and rear-ended it at speed. Eric managed to right his craft without losing too much ground, but he could tell from the two angry voices he heard in the distance that the competitors with whom he had collided hadn’t been as lucky.

  To think I took up this sport because I figured I’d be less likely to get hurt in an accident, Eric thought. I’ll be lucky to not get beaten up deliberately.

  The course rose steeply, then dipped into a sweeping left turn through an area free of any obstacles. It made Eric happy to have a moment to relax. He took a deep breath, loosened his shoulders, then clenched every controllable muscle in his body as his quad took the turn wide
and crashed into another competitor, forcing it off course.

  A distant voice shouted, “What the hell?!”

  “My fault!” Eric said. “Sorry. Some kind of malfunction. I’m pulling out.”

  He heard angry muttering as he moved his joysticks to slow his quad and steer it off the track. But he stopped noticing any sounds at all when his quad ignored his commands. It stayed on the track, sped up, and deliberately nudged another competitor into the wall, creating a shower of carbon fiber shrapnel. The track leveled off, weaving through the roof’s support structure. Eric’s quad stopped dead in the middle of a particularly narrow portion of the course. When the quad directly behind it tried to go low and pass beneath it, it ended up flying straight into a rafter. Another racer tried to cut around to the left, but Eric’s quad twitched in the same direction. The other quad nicked the edge of Eric’s, then careened out of control and shattered itself against the ceiling.

  Eric felt a strong shove from behind that forced him out of his chair. He fell blindly onto his gear case, barely managing to keep a grip on his controller with one hand. An angry voice asked, “What’s your problem?”

  Eric’s hands were both occupied—one with holding his controller and the other with picking himself up, so his visor stayed down. He felt a swooning queasiness as his inner ear told him he was standing up while his eyes told him he was banking through a high-speed curve and ramming directly into the back of yet another racer.

  Eric pulled the left stick all the way back, a command that should have cut all power to his quad and sent it spinning to the ground. It did not work.

  A strong hand grabbed Eric by the right wrist, and another angry voice said, “Bring your bird down now!”

  Eric turned his head toward the voice. His view from the quad turned in the same direction, showing him a close-up view of a fast-moving brick wall from mere inches away. Eric cried, “I’m trying! Look!” He blindly raised the controller in his left hand to show his attacker that he had cut the power to his quad. The heavy plastic controller connected with something soft, and then a strong shove sent him straight back to the ground.