Marisa grunted in frustration. Saif was almost to the door. The only reason to try to kill him now, at this precise moment, was if they’d been monitoring his sensory feeds and heard their conversation, and wanted to get rid of him before he told her anything else. One more loose end cut off, like eLiza. And if they were monitoring his senses before, they were definitely monitoring them now—anything he saw, they’d see, which is why she didn’t dare to get in front where they could see her.
Except . . . they’d already seen enough. They’d heard him say her first name, they’d seen her character information in the game system, and they’d heard her talk about Anja; if they were smart enough to code this drug in the first place, they were smart enough to trace that information backward and find who and where she was. Nothing was secret anymore. All she could do was save his life.
She stepped in front of Saif, blocking the door with her body, staring into his eyes. “Let go of him. I won’t let you kill him.”
“Who do you think you are?” said Saif, only it wasn’t him; the voice wasn’t right, and the eyes weren’t focusing on her. It was the puppetmaster, speaking through his toy.
“My name is—”
“We know your name, Marisa,” said Saif. “We just don’t understand why you think that matters. Why you think you matter. You can’t stop this.”
“I don’t have to stop the whole—”
“Just kill her, too, and get it over with,” said Saif’s mouth, as if whoever was controlling him was talking to someone else—another mastermind, far away in their secret lair. They didn’t even take her seriously enough to address her directly. Saif grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the door, rattling her bones and cracking the safety glass; it fractured into a spider’s web of brittle shards. Another slam would shatter it completely, and he adjusted his grip to do it.
“I’m sorry, Saif,” she said, gritting her teeth. She raised her SuperYu arm, curled her stainless steel fingers into a fist, and hammered it into his face. He staggered backward, twitched once like he’d touched a live circuit, and dropped to the floor.
Hey girl! said Jaya, the message bouncing cheerfully in Marisa’s djinni. How’s the date going?
ELEVEN
“Don’t call the police,” said Marisa, shooting a quick glance at the receptionist. He leaned over the counter, looking down at Saif’s unconscious body like it was a frog he’d been told to dissect. “We’ll clear out; we were never here.” The police would call her parents again, and the hell she’d catch for getting in trouble with the cops two days in a row would make being grounded look like a vacation. There were worse things than being sent to your room—if they wanted to get serious, they could shut off her djinni service altogether.
“Is he going to be okay?” asked the receptionist.
“He’ll be fine,” she said, and right on cue Saif moved his head. “See?”
“Buuuuuuuh,” said Saif, struggling painfully back into consciousness. His lip was split, and his face was bloody. Marisa grabbed the front door and pulled it open, propping it with her foot so she could drag Saif out onto the sidewalk—she needed to get him into hiding before the Bluescreen puppeteers could reestablish their link.
Mari, sent Jaya, you there?
Call everyone, Marisa sent back, grabbing Saif under the arms. Especially Bao—I need Bao.
What happened?
I punched a drug dealer in the face, said Marisa. Call Bao!
“Urrrrrr,” moaned Saif.
“Just hang on,” said Marisa. She pulled his feet clear of the door, and it swung shut behind them. “We’re going somewhere safe.” The sidewalk was empty, but the street was full of cars, their lights just beginning to come on as daylight gave way to a pale half-darkness. She looked at the passing autocabs, knowing they would make a great place to hide, but she didn’t want to pay with her own ID for fear of being tracked, and her fake account didn’t have enough money. Where else could she go?
Sahara’s voice icon popped up in Marisa’s vision, and she blinked on it to accept the call. “Mari, honey, what happened?”
Marisa grunted as she dragged Saif away from the busy intersection. “The good news is, Saif’s on our side.”
“Are you okay?”
“For now,” said Marisa. “The bad news is, the genius used his own drug. He’s got the puppet program, same as Anja, and they tried to kill him with it. He’s unconscious for now, but I don’t know what to do.”
“How’d they knock him out?”
“They didn’t,” said Marisa, straining to keep her grip as Saif started to squirm. “I became a Super Me. Triste chango, he’s starting to wake up.”
“Knock him out again,” said Sahara, and then Jaya and Fang both entered the call.
“Jaya filled me in,” said Fang. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“You have to go dark,” said Jaya. “Turn off your ID and your net connection completely.”
“They don’t have my ID code,” said Marisa. “They can’t track it through GPS.”