Tell me about it.
Don’t bother with Yosae, sent Anja. I sent them the same code yesterday, right after you left, and they claim they added it, but I ran an update and a scan and . . . nothing. The Bluescreen code’s still in there.
Marisa was horrified. You turned your djinni back on?
How else was I supposed to run the test? I turned it off right after; nothing happened.
As far as you know, sent Marisa. She paused, thinking. What does it feel like when they take over? Do you remember it?
Not really, but after it’s over I know that it’s happened.
The first time they tried to use you against your father, said Marisa. The second they tried to kill you—but why? You’re more useful as a tool.
You were talking about Bluescreen, said Anja. Maybe they just wanted you to stop.
Maybe, said Marisa, if we’d been on the verge of revealing something secret. Or discovering it. But we still don’t know anything—it doesn’t make sense. Marisa tapped the desk, trying to think. Why didn’t the Yosae update work? She frowned, remembering her suspicions about the police. Do you think they have someone inside of Yosae?
Anything’s possible at this point, wrote Anja, but I don’t think that’s it. I had Omar call the police again, and got some technical specs on those five people that killed eLiza—none of them were using Yosae. Two Pushkins, two Harrisons, and a Washboard.
Marisa almost laughed. There’s no way they bothered infiltrating Washboard. No one uses Washboard.
I know, sent Anja. It’s a joke, but it gives us information. It lets us know that this malware can hit anything, regardless of the security system, which probably means that there’s no inside man and there’s no security exploits—it’s just really, really . . . something.
What, though? sent Marisa. If we can figure out how it’s getting around these antivirus programs, we can figure out how to stop it.
Beats me, said Anja. I’ll keep working, though—what else am I going to do?
Did you make an appointment to get it replaced?
Monday morning, said Anja. First thing. But that doesn’t help anyone else who’s got the malware. Plus it’s going to be a pain in the butt to reconfigure a new one the way I like it. You know how much bloatware they put on those things.
Speaking of which, said Marisa, I need to update some of the settings on this brick, I’m not getting any of my regular feeds. She opened another browser window and started setting up news alerts; she didn’t expect to be djinniless for long, but it was soothing, in a way, to set her concerns aside for a few minutes and just read about Overworld—the latest tournament news, the latest strategies. Sahara’s Throw the Drone video had gone big, much bigger than she’d expected, even starting a meme: people had edited the video to make the drone say something annoying, and then Marisa’s avatar would tell it to shut up, until finally she couldn’t take it anymore and shoved him off the building. It was a funny meme, and Marisa laughed out loud at a few of them—something she hadn’t done in far too long. The meme had lasted about a day, by the look of it, which wasn’t bad, and then the boards flooded with people making their own drone-launching videos. It was a good bump of visibility for the Cherry Dogs, but without any time to sit down and follow it up with something awesome—like a Jackrabbit win—it wouldn’t be as helpful for the team as Sahara had wanted. Marisa clicked on another meme video, watching the drone complain about nuli rights, when suddenly one of her new alerts pinged. She opened the link, read the headline, and immediately sent it to Anja.
Have you seen this? “The Foundation Claims the Elizabeth Swaim Killers Were Corrupted by Their Djinnis.”
Great Holy Hand Grenades, sent Anja. That’s eLiza, right? And the protest group trying to picket the new Ganika plant?
Exactly, sent Marisa. Now we know for a fact that eLiza was killed by people with corrupted djinnis, but how does the Foundation know it?
Who else has figured out what Bluescreen really does? asked Anja. We haven’t heard a whiff about it in the news, or from the police, and Omar’s talked to them twice today.
I don’t think anyone’s figured it out, sent Marisa. Certainly not an antitech terrorist group. They use less tech than Bao does.
How could they have even heard of Bluescreen? asked Anja. Do antitech terrorists hang out in upper class Aidoru bars?
It’s spreading, sent Marisa. Pati got some at school yesterday.
Nine hells . . . she didn’t use it, did she?