“Sobredoxis,” said Grendel. “His English isn’t the best.”
Marisa tried to build a wall in her mind, keeping her thoughts private. Someone had been deleting Sobredoxis’s messages almost as quickly as they were posted, and yet somehow Grendel had seen them. Had he just gotten lucky, catching one of the posts during that tiny window before it disappeared? Or was he the one who’d been deleting them?
“If I was the one trying to hide his posts,” said Grendel, “why would I be coming to you now?”
“You’re reading my mind,” Marisa accused. She gritted her teeth, as if that would help to keep him out. The disembodied voice chuckled softly.
“And you’re reading mine,” said Grendel. “That’s what NeverMind is. Don’t worry—the more you practice, the better you get at controlling what other people see and hear.”
“So what are the Dolly Girls?” asked Marisa. “Is it a band?”
“It’s not a group,” said Grendel, “it’s a technology. Djinni software that can sever a mind’s conscious control of its body, allowing someone else to control the body like a puppet. I’ll leave it to your imagination what they tend to use it for.”
Marisa felt a wave of disgust roll over her, rippling through the walls of the room like the slow, lazy flick of a tentacle. “That’s horrible.”
“And highly illegal,” said Grendel. “They circumvent a few laws by only installing it in paid, consenting hosts, but even then there’s still a ton of laws they’re breaking. That’s why most people have never heard of it.”
Marisa closed her eyes, trying not to think of those poor human puppets, dancing on the end of some sick bastard’s digital string, and then her eyes flew open. “Anja!”
“Who’s Anja?”
“Nobody,” said Marisa fiercely, mentally kicking herself for saying the name out loud. She felt a sharp pain in her thigh, and as she staggered away she turned to see a copy of herself standing behind her, her foot raised in a kick. She wished the copy away, and felt an uncomfortable shiver as she watched herself disintegrate, turning to dust and blowing away in an intangible wind. She turned around slowly, peering into every corner of the room, expecting to see Grendel hiding in a shadow, but she was alone. The shadows grew deeper as she probed them, until she found herself at the center of a tiny circle of light. She wasn’t even sure if the walls were still there.
Grendel’s voice seemed almost unnaturally calm in the darkness. “I want to stress that the code you showed me is not the same as the Dolly Girls code. Just similar.”
“It’s a truncated version,” said Marisa. “It wasn’t growing in the right environment so it couldn’t—”
“You’re missing my point—it’s more sophisticated,” said Grendel. “Not less.” He paused for a moment, letting that sink in. Marisa felt the ramifications settle on her heavily—if the truncated code she’d found in the Bluescreen was somehow more powerful—
“So somebody found it in Japan and brought it here,” she said. “And then they . . . improved upon it.”
“You didn’t say on the message board where you found the code,” said Grendel, and then he paused just a fraction of a second before adding, “or where you are. I can only assume from your statement that you’re not in Japan?”
Marisa grimaced again, angry at how easily she was letting so much information slip out. “I’m not,” she said, “and I’m not going to tell you any more than that.”
“Let me take a wild guess,” said Grendel. “Los Angeles?”
Marisa glared at the darkness. “How in the hell did you—”
“I told you I’ve seen that code twice,” said Grendel. “The first was in the Dolly Girls, and the second was about three months ago. A hacker named eLiza posted on Lemnisca.te, just like you did. I recently learned that she lived in Los Angeles.”
“Lived?” asked Marisa. “Past tense?” She felt her chest tighten with fear.
“I wasn’t planning to contact you at all,” said Grendel, “but then I saw the news and decided I should warn you. eLiza was found murdered in her Los Angeles apartment not two hours ago.”
“Ay, que no,” said Marisa, shaking her head. NeverMind grew darker as the light slowly faded away.
“Be careful, Marisa Carneseca,” said Grendel, and Marisa felt her heart freeze. He knows my name. “Don’t go poking around where you don’t belong. Whoever knows this secret really doesn’t want it to get out.” The light disappeared, and Marisa sat up with a desperate cry, gasping for air in the back of the autocab. She felt like she’d just surfaced from a deep dive. Omar steadied her, and Anja grabbed her hands.
“Easy,” said Anja, “you’re back.”
“What happened?” asked Sahara from the speakers. “Is everything okay? Somebody talk to me!”
“We’re screwed,” said Marisa.