“Not yet,” said Bao, “but we can figure it out. We can do this.”
Marisa shook her head. “No we can’t! I’m a teenage girl, for crying out loud—I’m not a hero, I’m not a fighter, I’m barely even a hacker after the last few days. Everything I’ve touched has gone wrong. Everyone I’ve tried to help I’ve failed.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Bao.
“I’m talking about me, la Reina Idiota—”
“I watch every one of your games,” said Bao.
Marisa stopped, confused. “What?”
“Your Overworld games,” said Bao. “I haven’t missed one since you entered the league.”
“You . . . don’t even have a djinni.”
“There’s a bar downtown that shows them on a big screen,” said Bao. “I even have one of those Cherry Dogs logo hats—not just my fake hat, but real branded merchandise.”
“Okay,” said Marisa, “but . . . what does that have to do with anything?”
“Your Overworld persona is a hero,” said Bao. “Heartbeat is a hero. Calaca’s a psychopath, but he was right about one thing—the internet is the real world. What you do there matters, and what you do here matters. I’ve seen you spend days nursing a sick sister back to health; I’ve seen you work triple shifts in this restaurant to pay your family’s mortgage. You took Gabi to ballet when your parents were too scared to send her. Three nights ago you ran into the middle of a freeway to rescue your friend. You’re not just a hero, Mari, you’re my hero. If anyone can figure this out, it’s you.”
Marisa put her arm around him, a couple of tears rolling down her face, though this time they didn’t come from despair. “That’s the cheesiest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said. He smirked, and she smiled back. “Thanks.”
“I try,” said Bao.
“Don’t worry,” said Marisa, pulling away to wipe at her eyes. “You’ve convinced me. But if we’re going to do this, we need all the help we can get.”
Sahara groaned, and rolled on her side.
“Just in time,” Marisa said, and crawled to Sahara’s side. Her broken arm dragged behind her, twisted and useless; if she was going to do this, she’d have to take it off. She smiled grimly at the image: a one-armed girl taking on two rabid gangs and a deadly cartel. She laughed.
Bao followed her to Sahara’s side. “Is that a confident laugh, or a just-slipped-off-the-deep-end laugh?”
“I was just thinking,” said Marisa, disconnecting the main coupling from her prosthetic. The tangled wires pulled taut, and she ripped them free with a final tug. “I’m literally going to beat them with one hand tied behind my back.”
“So,” said Bao. “Just-slipped-off-the-deep-end it is.”
Sahara groaned again, her eyes fluttering behind her eyelids. Marisa took her hand and shook her gently by the shoulder.
“Wake up, babe,” she said. “We’ve got a game to plan.”
TWENTY-TWO
“Everybody here?” asked Marisa. She was upstairs in Sahara’s bedroom, changing out of her tattered, bloody T-shirt while Sahara and Bao waited in the room beyond. All the Cherry Dogs were patched into a call, preparing for battle.
Jaya’s voice was clear as crystal over the djinni. “Ready to go.”
“Ready to tear Lal a new anus,” said Fang.
“I’m ready too,” said Bao, grouped into the call over his handheld phone. “But less graphically than Fang is.”
“I think I’m still seeing double,” said Sahara, “but I’m ready.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to plan,” said Marisa, looking in Sahara’s closet. Most of her clothes were too flashy, but the back of her closet held the perfect standby: black shirt, and a black leather jacket. She pulled them on as she talked, struggling with only one arm. “La Sesenta is headed for Bluescreen’s headquarters, and Tì Xū Dāo is already there, and that’s going to be enough of a bloodbath even without Maldonado’s enforcers, plus the news feeds are showing all the Bluescreen puppets converging on Mirador. This has to be where they’re going—some kind of failsafe defense mechanism, I guess, to protect the programmers? I don’t know why they’re doing it, but if we don’t find a way to stop it fast, thousands of people could die or be permanently catatonic, including Anja.”
“The good news,” said Bao, “is that all the plans we made before are pretty much screwed.”
“How is that good news?” asked Jaya.
“Because Lal has no idea what we’re going to do instead,” said Marisa. “He was using us to identify holes in his security—we just have to hope we didn’t find all of them.”
“If La Sesenta and the Maldonados are heading there,” mused Sahara, “we don’t have to have to worry about being subtle anymore.”
“She’s right,” said Jaya. “We’ve got the best distraction we could ever ask for, so let’s take advantage of it.”