“Hasta luego, Abue,” said Marisa, jumping out of her seat. She grabbed her backpack, practically ripping one of the seams with her clumsy SuperYu hand—she’d gotten used to the lighter touch of the Jeon, and still made mistakes as she tried to adjust back to the older prosthetic. She kissed her abuela good-bye and followed Gabi out the door, with Sandro close behind.
Aidorus don’t really use a lot of sensory interfaces, sent Fang, just holograms. There might be a connection, but I doubt it.
Marisa waited on the curb while her siblings walked away; they only got a few steps before they noticed she wasn’t with them, and stopped to look back. Marisa smiled. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Sandro rolled his eyes.
“Be safe,” said Gabi.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Marisa, “I’m just going to school with Anja today.”
They hesitated a moment, then turned and walked away. Marisa ran a quick net search for Dolly Girls while she waited for Anja’s cab, but the top links were either toys or porn. She closed the search in disgust—had that Brazilian dude really posted all those messages just to trick her onto a porn site? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’d ever happened to her on the internet.
A message appeared from Bao. See you in history today? It was the only class they shared; she was two years ahead of him in math, and of course he was already fluent in Chinese. She told him about her plans with Anja. Be careful, he sent.
The cab arrived and Marisa climbed in, pursing her lips and thinking. Everyone kept telling her to be careful, but what was she really getting into? If the file she’d found in her hotbox actually was a virus, what were the people who made Bluescreen trying to do? What would she find when she studied the same file in Anja’s djinni?
“Good morning!” said the cab. Its voice was cheerful but hollow. “I have your destination already programmed. Would you like to visit a Starbucks on the way for a refreshing iced coffee?”
“No thanks,” said Marisa, “just go.”
“Starbucks has five convenient locations along our route, and the most modern fleet of nulis in Los Angeles. We won’t even have to stop.”
“No more ads,” said Marisa.
“Then let’s go!” said the cab, and pulled away from the curb. As soon as it got up to speed a message popped up from Anja; she’d probably been tracking the cab’s GPS. Now that you’re en route and stuck I can tell you: Omar’s here. He says hi. The message ended with a giant winking smiley face. Marisa rolled her eyes.
The cab pulled up at Anja’s private high school, and Marisa felt like she could feel the pretension rolling off the place in waves. Anja and Omar were waiting by the front gate; Omar climbed into the cab first, and Anja followed him in and sat in his lap. He was dressed as usual, in smart slacks and a dress shirt that seemed to hug the contours of his chest; Marisa wondered if he wore a size too small on purpose, just to show off his pecs. She tore her eyes away to look at Anja, who was wearing what looked like two halves of two different biking outfits: tight gray lycra pants crisscrossed with red lines and triangles, under a black-and-yellow jacket of slick, stippled leather. Against all odds, it looked pretty good.
“Good morning, Mari,” said Omar. His expression was darker than usual, his typical smarmy humor replaced by a grim resolve. “Thank you for saving Anja last night.”
“Holy crap yes,” said Anja. “And now you’re going to save me again!”
“Maybe,” said Marisa. She opened her backpack and pulled out a MoGan tablet and a djinni cable. “Plug in and we’ll take a look.”
“Whoa,” said Anja, grabbing Marisa’s metal wrist. “Back to the old SuperYu, huh?”
“The Jeon was thrashed.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Anja, and her eyes looked so sad Marisa couldn’t help but think of a guilty puppy, pleading for forgiveness. Marisa couldn’t think of anything to say, and after a moment Anja fished a slim white cable out of her cascade of blond hair. She pulled the cord around and offered it to Marisa, who clicked it into the port on her tablet and opened the file manager. Anja twisted her face into a guilty smirk. “Sorry I got you grounded too.”
Marisa shrugged, her fingers tapping the tablet’s screen. “Meh. As long as they think I’m in school right now there’s no real harm done. Sahara duped my ID signal for the day, so unless they do a visual check I should be fine.” She glanced at Omar, expecting some crack about “kids” getting grounded—as a college freshman he had much greater freedom, and never missed an opportunity to tease them about it. Today he said nothing.