One screen down.
“But you see,” said Calaca, gesturing with the rail gun, “I don’t believe that you don’t know who’s behind it. You seem to know everything these days, and your brother Chuy can’t stop talking about how brilliant his little sister is. So let me ask you specifically: who’s controlling the puppets?”
“We don’t know,” said Bao. Calaca aimed the gun at Carlo Magno again.
“His name is Lal,” said Marisa. “He works with a man named Nils, but we’ve only ever found them online—never in the real world—”
“Online is the real world,” said Calaca. “Find them in one and you find them in the other.” He pointed the gun back at her, taking two steps forward. “Or are you trying to tell me that our friendly neighborhood hacker girl couldn’t find one little drug dealer?”
Two screens down.
“One little drug programmer,” said Marisa. “I’m a hacker, but I’m small time—these are big fish, swimming in some very deep water, and they have fought back against every attempt I’ve ever made to try to find them. One time I followed them with a nuli, and not only did they kill the nuli, they traced my satellite connection and almost found me. I had to burn a whole server just to get away.” She hadn’t told him everything, but everything she’d told him had been true. She prayed that it would be enough.
Calaca stared at her a minute, the gun not even wavering. Marisa watched his eyes, waiting for the telltale twitch that he was about to pull the trigger. He stared back, practically boiling with fury, and abruptly flicked his eyes to the right, looking over her shoulder at Bao. “Is she telling the truth?”
“Yes,” said Bao.
Three screens down.
Calaca roared in anger. “I need to know where they are! This is my pinche neighborhood, and I’m not going to stand by while some cabrón tears it apart. If what you say is true, all we have to do is find these people, and then it’s game over for them. We cut off the connection, and everyone they control goes back to normal. Am I understanding the situation correctly?”
She changed the final screen, praying that she’d done it right, switching the satellite image of the warehouse with one so similar he wouldn’t notice that she’d been trying to hide anything. All the screens were clear.
He took another step toward her. “You tell me how to save my sister, or I will drop you right where you are, and everyone else in this room with you.”
“I don’t know!” Marisa cried.
He stalked forward, pressing the rail gun barrel directly against her head. “You have to know! You—” And then he stopped, his mouth open, staring at the table behind her. “What’s that?”
She’d missed a screen.
She turned. The menu screen on the table had been damaged, the surface splintered and cracked so much that the network couldn’t even talk to it. She’d thought it was broken. But the image was still there, fractured but visible.
“Marisa Carneseca,” said Calaca, staring at the surveillance image. “You’ve been lying to me. I’m honestly kind of impressed; that takes balls.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
He shot, and Marisa dropped to the floor in pain. Her eyes refused to focus, seeing a double image of Calaca saying something else; she couldn’t hear what it was, her ears still ringing from the sound of the gunshot. Calaca turned and walked out, and Bao rushed to Marisa’s side.
She tried to push him away, but only one of her arms worked. The bullet had destroyed her prosthetic arm. She looked down at her torso, expecting to see a pool of blood and viscera, but all she found was a bruise. The SuperYu had stopped the bullet.
“Are you okay?” asked Bao.
Marisa couldn’t find the words to answer him. Her entire world seemed to be falling apart.
Bao touched the twisted arm gingerly; the force of the bullet had bent it to a hideous angle, slagging the circuits and crippling the motors. Her side felt like she’d fallen off a roof, but nothing had broken the skin. “This hunk of junk saved your life,” said Bao. “That new Jeon you used to have never would have stopped a bullet like that.”
“I can’t do this,” said Marisa, shaking her head. “This is too much. Calaca and Lal and Nils and Omar and Tì Xū Dāo and who knows how many thousands of puppets. They’re better hackers than I am, they have more guns than I do, they have more everything.” She shook her head, tears collecting in her eyes. “I can’t do it.”
“You have friends,” said Bao. He tried to lift her, but she pushed him away again, so he simply slid down the wall to sit beside her. “You’re one person, but together there’s two of us. Wake up Sahara and there’s three. Call in Jaya and Fang, and we’re five. Cure Anja and we’re six.”
“I can’t cure Anja.”