“Of course it’s a drug.”
“But you found me,” said Saif, ignoring the ice in her voice. “That means you can find the other dealers too, right?”
Marisa said nothing, stunned by the plea for help. Was he serious? Did he really want to make this better? He had to be playing an angle—maybe he just wanted to learn her methods so he could teach the others how to hide better. There was no way he was sincere. She hesitated, torn between hanging up forever and actually saying yes, digging into the mystery to see what kind of trick he was trying to pull. After a moment she whispered, “Probably.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice eager. “This is a big operation, with a lot of dealers. We’re going to have to find them one by one. Let’s get together and figure out—”
“What’s your plan?” Marisa asked. “Find each one and just . . . talk them out of it? Appeal to the better nature of a city full of drug dealers?”
“If I can change my mind, so can they.”
“And if they don’t, what then? Scare them? Kill them? And if by some miracle they do change their minds, how do we stop the suppliers from just finding new dealers to replace them? How do we stop whoever’s making the drug from just finding new suppliers?”
“I don’t know the answers to any of these questions,” said Saif. “But with my contacts and your skills, we can at least make a start—we can learn about them, and then come up with a plan from there.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well,” he said, “if you really don’t care about this—”
“Of course I care about this,” she snapped. “Do you?” Maybe he wasn’t as rich as she’d thought he was, but he obviously wanted to be. Selling Bluescreen had given him money, and instead of saving it he’d bought the most expensive car he could—he didn’t care about helping people, he wanted luxury and prestige. Maybe that was the difference Sahara had asked about, why Marisa could be friends with Anja but hate all of the others. Anja didn’t care about the wealth. Saif did. Bluescreen was his chance to get rich, and somehow he thought that lying to her was going to help it happen.
“I know you’re still mad at me,” he said, “so you pick the place. Anywhere you feel comfortable meeting me.”
She closed her eyes, asking herself what she was getting into, but she still she didn’t say no. Maybe she could play him, like he was playing her. Find out what he was trying to pull. He wouldn’t be hard to fool: he thought everybody loved him, so it wouldn’t be hard to convince him that she did, too. Another girl blinded by his charm. She thought about his face, his dark eyes, his devious smile. It wouldn’t be hard to pretend to fall for him.
But it might be hard to stop.
She blinked open the map on her djinni, searching through the USC area. “You said you play VR games?”
“Now and then.”
“There’s a VR parlor on Thirty-Fifth,” she said, finding one on the map. “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
“I think I know it. You play?”
Marisa grinned wickedly. “A little. Tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow.”
She paused again, waiting for . . . she didn’t know. She felt mad and tired and guilty all at once, and so desperate for . . . a way out? Revenge? She wasn’t sure. Both, maybe. Someone had hurt her friend, and now she had the chance to not only protect Anja, but to hurt the bad guys back. She opened her mouth to speak again, but shook her head and closed the call without saying good-bye.
She touched her arm again, running her fingers along the broken prosthetic. It was an elegant, curving surface, plastic and metal and ceramic, once smooth and comforting but now scratched and dented, beaten out of shape by the force of the speeding truck. She’d wanted a Jeon all her life, saving every cent, pulling extra shifts in San Juanito, and now it was all gone. Without the servos and motors to move it around, it hung on her shoulder like an anchor. She rapped it with her knuckles, listening to the useless thud, and finally stood up off her bed, letting the dead arm swing free as she walked to her closet. Most of her old computer parts were on her work desk—a thick, wooden table covered with screens and devices of every shape and size—but the one she needed was in the back of her closet, high on a back shelf, in a box she’d hoped to never open again. She stood on the tips of her toes, pulled it out, and opened it.
Her old, crappy arm, a SuperYu 920. It was the only thing they could afford two years ago, but the stiff, robotic limb was so out-of-date today it made her wince just to look at it. Why did anyone ever think it would be cool to look like a Terminator in real life? She sighed. What other options did she have?