Yonkers sprawled out below me, rotting in places, shiny in others. Vehicles the size of toys tooled along, too far away for me to hear their engines. In the parking lot directly below me, two kids who’d been trying to sneak a smoke were being marched back into the building by a gray-haired security guard.

They watched the exits like we were in a fucking state prison instead of a public school, but no one bothered to watch the roof.

I enjoyed the view, my hands on my hips, a cool breeze coming off the Hudson. I was in no hurry. Lunch period would last another half hour, and since I had no money for lunch, I could afford to take my time. Hopefully when I climbed down I’d have the lunch money problem solved. More likely I’d end up electrocuting myself, from not bypassing the filter that kept people from tapping directly into the Axonet upstream.

Upstream. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d pictured the net as a water current. The filter was like a dam that kept users from screwing with the processors and stuff beyond. Although really, a filter didn’t look anything like a dam. Yonkers High School’s filter looked like a wad of extremely thin spaghetti jammed into a black rectangle. I’d located it in the bug-infested space between the ceiling of the janitor’s supply room and the roof, which is how I knew I was now beyond its power to block me from adding five hundred dollars in credit to my currently empty lunch account. Assuming it was possible to add an access point beyond the filter. Assuming the doohickey I’d made from broken net systems and other assorted tech shit actually worked.

Pulling the box cutter from my waistpack, I made an inch-long slit in the thick black rubber tube that contained the cables that led to the wireless linkup. It took me about ten minutes to graft my line into the cable, and I accomplished it without electrocution, so a big win there.

A ping test told me I was connected. I activated the small black velvet screen on the worn-out sleeve system I’d rigged, not knowing what to expect. What did a screen display when you were beyond the filter?

Nothing, it turned out. Darkness. I worked the system, trying to navigate.

A line of text scrolled across the blank screen on my wrist: Who is this?

This, I hadn’t expected. Had I tapped directly into someone’s account? But I was on the far side of the filter. Even Principal Little Head couldn’t get into Axon’s naked processing. It had to be coming from the other end—from someone at Axon, the Axonet’s owners. In which case, there was no way they could ID me on the roof of a school, using a jerry-rigged system made from discarded parts.

Who is this? I wrote back.

This is Izzy Malfouz. What are you doing at the YHS interchange? You’re not part of the net are you??? You’re outside?

I yanked the connection and took off. Shit. How could they pinpoint me if I was using a Frankensteined system?

I climbed off the edge of the roof, swung back into the window I’d come through. Pattering down the back stairwell, I ducked into the cafeteria, took my usual seat at the far end of a long table.

The kids on the other end were laughing and shooting straw wrappers at each other, and all sorts of other immature shit. They hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

A girl wearing a glittering wrist-to-shoulder system whose name I should have probably known by then glanced my way. She mouthed something wordlessly to her system, and the girl sporting triple pony tails who was sitting across from her also glanced my way. They both burst into laughter.

I was fucking hilarious, with my bare, system-less arm, my too-big worn-out dumpster pants held up by a man’s belt, my hair cut by Uncle Selk, who was not really my uncle, just the person who signed my report cards now that my mother and sister were dead. Ninth grade was the last free grade before the fees kicked in, so they were getting their laughs in before I was out of here for good.

The girl with the glittery system took a French fry off her plate, wiggled it back and forth. “Hey Candace. You hungry? Hmm?” She tossed it. It landed on the table close to me.

I swiped in the direction of the French fry. “Fuck you, you spoiled, weak-ass little fancy girl. I’ll fucking eat you for lunch.”

Laughing, the girls turned their attention back to their friends. They knew I couldn’t get to them, because there were a lot of them, and only one of me. I could take any of them, put them in the hospital, but I was always outnumbered. They all hated me, every single one of them, and I hated them. That was okay. There were other nouns. I didn’t have people (except for union people) and I didn’t have things, but I had places. I could go anywhere in Yonkers, and even beyond. Places were all the nouns I needed.

While the girls weren’t looking, I grabbed the French fry and shoved it in my mouth.

Izzy Malfouz. It was a peculiar name. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was one Izzy Malfouz in the entire Divided States.

You’re not a part of the net, are you? What had he meant by that? He wasn’t part of the net, either. Unless the net was operated by an AI that Axon had named?

As soon as lunch was over, I cut algebra class as usual and headed for the library, where they had systems available for us poor bastards. The teachers never called me out for cutting class. They gave me C’s, because they wanted me out of there, and if I flunked ninth grade, they’d be stuck with me for another year.

I searched for Izzy Malfouz in the directory.

No Izzy Malfouz. I tried a wider subject search, and got some hits.

The first was an obituary.

I got an icy/crawly sensation, like refrigerated bugs were crawling in my hair and down my shirt. An Izzy Malfouz had died in a car accident three years ago. Had I just tapped into a ghost? Was the soul of Izzy Malfouz haunting the Axonet, riding its currents around the planet?

Izzy had been from Connecticut, nineteen, a college boy at The University of Pennsylvania. He’d been tall as shit—six foot six—and had had a basketball scholarship.

And I just had to know if I’d been talking to this dead Izzy Malfouz, or to another Izzy Malfouz who left no electronic footprint at all, even though he worked for the biggest fucking tech company in the world. Or to an AI that had been given a really wacked name. I had to know.

I took a detour on my way to the bathroom, up to the third floor, where I picked the ancient lock on the instructional material storage room, and squeezed out the window for the second time today.

A message appeared as soon as I connected.

Please don’t disconnect.

My fingers tingled as I typed away on the little pad. Where are you?

His answer came instantaneously. Node 155742C.

Which was no help at all. Time to cut to the chase. What is your favorite sport?

“Basketball,” said a flat, inhuman voice. I was halfway across the roof when blind panic let up enough for me to control my legs. I inched back toward my makeshift system like it might spring up and bite my ankle.

“Are you from Connecticut?” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.

“You checked up on me. You’re really on the outside? Not part of the system?”

“You died in a car accident.”

There was a pause before he answered. “Yes.”

I shivered. I was speaking to a dead person.

Who was communicating through the Axonet? The ridiculousness of this hit me all at once, and I laughed. “This is someone fucking with me, isn’t it? Good one, I gotta admit.” I reached to disconnect.

“No. Absolutely not.” His voice stayed flat, but panic bled through. “Please don’t disconnect.”

I kept my hand on the wire, ready to disconnect and bolt. “So how am I talking to you, if you’re dead?”

“I don’t know. One moment, I was bleeding out with a steering wheel embedded in my chest, the next, I was in blackness, with directions running through my head.”

I pressed my palm to the rough concrete roof to steady myself, because the roof was suddenly spinning.

“What’s your name?” Izzy Malfouz asked.

I laughed. “Not a chance. How stupid do you think I am?”

“Okay, no problem. Just, please don’t disconnect. I’ve been here for three years, and you’re the only person I’ve talked to, unless you count the three nodes I’m connected to.”

“What’s a node? Aren’t you a ghost?”

“We run the net. There are a lot more of us in here. I don’t know how many. When we do a good job, we feel good; when we don’t—pain.”

“You run…” My lips felt like slabs of numb blubber. How the fuck were a dead kid and his friends running the net?

“I need your help,” Izzy said. “Will you please help me?”

He’d almost had me. Just another scammer. “I don’t have any fucking money, so don’t waste your time.”

“I don’t want money. Believe me, money’s useless to me. I’m pretty sure I’m not in a body anymore. If I am, I can’t feel it. I just want to talk to my mom. Will you call her for me?”

“I don’t have a system. I’m a squatter—I don’t even know if I’m going to get dinner tonight.”

“Shit. Please don’t disconnect. Let me think.”

I let him think while I tried not to lose my shit. What was his angle, if he didn’t want money? Or were there really dead people trapped inside the net?

“I can get you a system,” Izzy said. “Do you have something to write with?”

That got my attention. I pulled a pen from my waistpack. “Sure.”

He gave me a code, and told me to type it into the self-claim at the nearest Axon store. Maybe they were trying to lure me to where they could nail me for hacking their system.

“Swear you’ll come back,” he said.

“If I call your mom for you, I get to keep the system? No strings?”

“Sure. In fact, I’ll give you a code for another after I speak to her.”

Which would be easy to resell, as good as a pile of cash. My heart was thudding as I disconnected. It was probably a scam. What if it was real, though? What if Izzy Malfouz had been raised from the dead? I wanted to know if that was true.

Even more than that, I wanted that system.

For the first time, I was grateful that everyone looked right through the filthy street kid, their systems erasing me along with the rest of the trash and gum stains on the sidewalk along New Main Street. I passed the Axon store twice, watching for anything suspicious. It would have helped if I could see into the store, but the windows were covered with moving images of All the Right People using the latest systems to have fabulous lives, in eleven-foot-tall splendor.  Their systems ranged from wrist-to-shoulder chameleon sleeves that changed color to match their outfit, to mini-sleeves barely covering their wrists. Axon security officers stood on either side of the entrance, bands of polished neon orange armor making them look like second-string superheroes.

There was no way to do this without risking getting caught. What if it was a trap, though? What could they do to me? Put me in juvy? How much worse could it be than living in a union squat? I’d be stuck inside, but at least I’d get fed.

On my third pass, I took a deep breath and stepped through the door.

I was met by the fragrance of jasmine and pine forest, and by an Axon associate whose lips formed a little “O” of horror that someone like me had stepped on their polished floor.

He raised a hand, shook his head. “We’re not hiring.”

I brushed past him, heading for a kiosk. As soon as I stepped in front of the screen, a buttery female voice said, “Can I help you?”

I glanced over my shoulder at the associate, then told her I was picking up a system. I gave her the code, and held my breath, half-expecting a platoon of Axon security people to come busting out of the back room, heaters raised.

A sparkly transparent ball rolled out of a slot. The ball, which felt like skin, broke open in my hands, like it was giving birth to the system rolled up inside. Triumphant music played.

I ran for the exit.

“Have an A day,” the associate called.

“Eat shit,” I called back as the door swung closed behind me.

Moving out of the flow of pedestrians, I unrolled the system. It was silver with green speckles, lighter than it looked, the material so thin it felt like it would dissolve in my hands. I pulled the sleeve up my forearm, looped my thumb through the smaller hole on the end. It extended just past my elbow.

Everything shifted. The air took on a golden tint. New Main Street was perfectly jet black, and each building was a different pastel color. Everyone who passed was smiling brightly. It was like I’d stepped into a new reality. I knew what the world looked like through a system–I’d seen it on TV a million times, but I’d had no idea it looked this real. I didn’t understand how something I put on my arm made my eyes see differently, and I didn’t care. I wanted to see like this for the rest of my life.

“Welcome to Axon,” the woman’s voice from the kiosk said in my head. “What shall I call you?”

“Gertrude.” No way I was giving her my real name. It could still be a scam of some kind.

“Hi Gertrude. What can I help you with?”

“I don’t know. I’m heading back to my school. Yonkers High.”

“Sure, I can help you with that. Here’s the shortest route.” An orange stripe rolled out from the toe of my duct-taped shoe, stretching along the sidewalk in the direction of my school.

The question was, did I risk going back up to the roof? I wanted that second system, but what if that was where the trap was set? If I got my hands on a second system, though, I could keep one. It was like living somewhere new—somewhere clean and in the future. Aury would have freaking loved this. She’d always talked about getting out of this shithole, going—

I stopped walking.

There are a lot of others, he’d said. Could Aurelia be one of them? She’d died three years ago, just like Izzy. If Izzy was who he said he was.

I hurried toward the school.

Izzy linked my jerry-rigged Frankenstein system to my brand-new system so I could speak to him while moving around the roof.

“Do you know if my sister is in there? Aurelia Fernandez-Asario.” Now he knew who I was, but I had to take the chance, even if it was the tiniest chance.

“I can only talk to my nodes. I know they’re not the only ones, because they each talk to three others, and so on. We have no idea how many of us there are. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“My nodes asked if you’d contact their families as well.”

“Sure, whatever.” I tried to shake off the disappointment. I had this system, anyway. That was something. Even the roof looked cleaner. Red bands ran around the perimeter, warning me of danger, as if it cared whether I lived or died.

Izzy sent me contact info in text form. It scrolled out in the bottom left corner of my vision. “We only have one system for my entire family, so you might get one of my sisters or cousins when you call. Whoever it is, prepare them the best you can, then I’ll come on.”

I asked my system to make the call.

And suddenly, it was like I was in Izzy Malfouz’s family’s tiny kitchen.

“Yes?” The lady speaking was wearing a kerchief on her head, and a sparkly cat T-shirt that screamed I’m a Mom. To her I was a face inside a circle hovering in the air, but to me, it was like I was there.

“Hey. Did you have a son named Izzy?”

She looked startled, then sad, then borderline angry. “Yes?”

“I’m a friend of Izzy’s, sort of, and there’s something I have to tell you about him. But I’m warning you, this is going to sound weird.” That hadn’t come out as clear as I’d planned.

Suddenly, I was back on the roof.

“The call dropped,” I said to Izzy.

“What? That shouldn’t happen. Try again.”

I told the system to call again.

In her smooth voice, the system said, “I’m sorry, Gertrude. That link is not available to you.”

“The system says the link is not available to me.”

There was a pause before Izzy answered. “Axon must have surveillance on our families’ links. Something you said set off an alarm.”

I glanced around the roof.  “Which means they’re probably tracing me to this roof right now. They can do that, can’t they?”

“We’re running a baffle, but you should probably get out of there.”

I reached to disconnect the Frankenstein system.

“Leave the system in place, so I can communicate with you. Please.”

I froze, my fingers an inch from the system. “They blocked me. There’s nothing I can do for you.” I hoped like hell he didn’t want the system back. What could he do, though? I had it, and he was a ghost or something.

“You have to go in person,” Izzy said.

I jumped to my feet. “Bullshit. You lived in Connecticut. I’m not going to Connecticut.”

“I can get you there and back. Just like I got you that system.”

Why would he think I’d do this for him? I didn’t know him. I didn’t even know what he was.

He had something I wanted, though. If Aury was really in there, if I could talk to her. What would I do for that chance?

Anything.

“You have to find my sister first.”

Long pause. “I promise I’ll try. But you have to go now.”

I crossed my arms. “So suddenly there’s a way, now that you need something from me?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“Right.” He was obviously bullshitting me, to get what he wanted. “Tell me how. You said you could only talk to three other people. How would you do it?”

“Sometimes we pass messages down the line. Not often, because it makes us feel sick. When you think about anything but work, you feel sick. We’ve never tried a chain of more than five or six, but my nodes are willing to try to get a message to go far. As far as we can.”

“Why would you feel sick, if you’re dead? The other nodes are also dead, I’m assuming?”

“I don’t know how they make us feel sick. And yes, most of the others remember dying. Dying young. Do we have a deal?”

“No. You find my sister, and then I go. That’s the deal.” If he put someone on the line, I’d ask something that only Aury would know, to be sure.

“Look, chances are she’s not in here, but I promise I’ll do everything I can to find out. But please, you have to go now, before Axon discovers this breach. That’s got to be the deal. I’m sorry, take it or leave it.”

It made no sense to run me all the way to Connecticut if this was a scam. Which meant I really was talking to a dead guy. I’d probably make the trip and end up with nothing, but it was a chance.

And honestly, what the hell else did I have to do? Go to school and have French fries and insults thrown at me?

“You promise you’ll start looking for her now? And I’ll need food.”

“Yes. And I can get you all you can eat. No problem.”

I licked my dry lips. Connecticut. Shit, I’d never even been across the Hudson. “Okay, then.” I headed for the edge of the roof. The red stripe had vanished. So had the pretty blue sky, replaced by a smoky, polluted gray. “What happened to my system?”

“I disconnected it from the net, so Axon can’t track you,” Izzy said. “Now it only connects you to me, and me to the outside. I can see what you see.”

Twenty minutes. That’s all I’d gotten of the pretty world that all the special people lived in every damned day. That seemed about right. I was destined for a life of gum stains and grime.

The only thing left overlaying my vision was a list of three names, along with their families’ contact info, tucked so far down in the bottom left corner that I had to strain to look straight at them. Izzy’s three nodes.

I probably needed to stop by the squat to tell Uncle Selk that I was going to be gone for a couple of days. Although on second thought, it wasn’t like he would send out a search party if I didn’t show up for a while. He might not even notice.

“So how do I get there?”

I wound around blank-eyed people, their systems hugging their forearms, hating them even more, now that I understood how fucking pretty their world was. I kept glancing at the names in the corner of my vision. Henry Cleary, Rigoberta Castaneda, Sally Ann Hoak. Would I find obituaries for them if I looked? I wanted to understand why these people were in there. I mean, it couldn’t be that everyone who died was in there, could it? There had to be a reason why these people were.

“I need to make a stop before I get on the train.” I turned left around the corner, to a cafe where I could get on the net. I bought some grade-seven water while I was at it. Tasted like shit, but it was cheap, and supposedly didn’t give you cancer.

Once I’d activated a trace block, I located Henry Cleary’s obit in under a minute. Age twenty-seven, worked as a gig janitor, no cause of death. The second-to-last paragraph caught my eye. His body has been donated to Good Medical United, to advance the cause of medical research.

My heart was suddenly pumping like a freight engine. I thought I might be having a heart attack at fifteen.

Good Medical. The smiling woman who’d stopped me outside the morgue, handing me a blue and yellow card with Good Medical embossed on it. Your sister’s final act on Earth can be a kindness. At the same time, that generosity can spread to you. I bet that’s what she’d want, if you could ask her.

I got eight thousand dollars cash, in exchange for “donating” Aury’s body to Good Medical, who passed her on to a medical school, so their students could cut her up and learn what a gall bladder looked like.

I hadn’t had the money for a funeral. Shit, I hadn’t had enough to buy her a bouquet of flowers. My choice had been to get good money from Good Medical, and they promised to bury Aury after the med students were finished with her, or to dig a hole in the woods somewhere. I figured if Aury could benefit others while I made enough to feed the squat for a few months, that was win-win.

I found a listing for Rigoberta Castaneda’s death, but no obit. Sally Ann Hoak had one, though. Her body had been donated to Good Medical. A little more digging, and I discovered that Good Medical United was on a long list of the charitable arms of Axon.

Izzy was looking out through my eyes, so I didn’t need to say anything. He could connect the dots.

Back on the street, I passed a woman walking a dog wearing a system on its front leg. Gee, what would they think of next? Selfish fuckers.

“I told my nodes what you found. I think word is spreading,” Izzy said.

“That’s her!” a boy’s voice called from above.

As I looked up to see half a dozen boys peering down from the roof of a tenement, something slammed into my shoulder. I dropped to one knee, screaming in pain. A brick smashed to the pavement a foot from me. Glancing back up at the roof, I was just in time to dodge another coming straight at my head.

I ran.

“Go, go, go!” Someone on the roof shouted.

“Axon located you when you performed that search,” Izzy said. “Us, too. They’re directing other nodes to shut the four of us down.”

“But I set up a trace block!”

“And Axon built the net,” Izzy said. “I didn’t know they could do that, or I would have warned you.”

“There she is!” Two teens sitting on a stoop jumped up and took off after me.

I broke into a sprint. Why were these kids dogging me?

“Head for the subway,” Izzy said.

I took the steps four at a time, the two kids ten feet behind me. I headed toward the turnstiles, which were too high to jump. “What do I do? What do I do?”

“Go straight through. It’ll open,” Izzy said.

I stiff-armed the turnstile. It rotated to let me through. I glanced back to see the two kids breeze right through, because they had systems that worked. Beyond them, dozens of ten, twelve, fifteen-year-olds were coming down the steps, shouting like this was some sort of game.

The floor ramped downward, toward the trains. I burst out of the tunnel, onto the platform.

“Not on the train. Get on the track and head into the tunnel.”

The engine was idling a dozen feet from the mouth of the dark subway tunnel.

“I’ll get run over!”

“I got it covered.”

Commuters shouted and gasped as I sprang off the platform and headed into the tunnel, gravel crunching underfoot, the engine’s headlight blinding.

As soon as I was clear, the engine’s wheels squealed, and it began to roll forward.

The shouts behind me were growing more distant. The train was blocking them from getting into the tunnel. “Did you just move that train?”

“We can override their automated schedule.”

I slowed to a walk. If Izzy could control the train, I figured there wasn’t much chance of it running me down. My shoulder was on fire, like I’d been stung by a giant wasp. “What just happened?”

“Best guess is Axon is telling under eighteens that you’re wanted for some awful crime, and their systems’ facial recognition protocol picks you up.”

So as soon as I was back up top, people would be throwing bricks at me again.

My toe caught a cross-tie and I stumbled and fell. My shoulder screamed as my palms scraped the gravel. I lay there on my stomach. My legs felt shaky and numb, like they were done working for a while.

“There’s a safety station fifty feet ahead. Why don’t we rest there?” Izzy said.

I managed to stagger to my feet.

There was a fold-out stool set in a divot in the wall. I dropped onto it and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at my shoulder. I hated looking at wounds. But no one else was going to do it, so I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off my shoulder.

It was swelling, and there was a triangle-shaped gouge and a bloody scrape coming off of it, but I wasn’t going to die.

“Any luck finding my sister?”

“We’re trying. Not just me. The four of us.”

Down the tunnel, the train squealed to life. The headlight grew larger.

I stood. “Hang on. They’ll come after me once the train is clear.”

“I got it covered.”

That was easy to say when no one was chasing you with bricks.

The engine passed me with about twelve inches of clearance from my nose. When half of the train had gone by, it squealed to a stop. A set of doors opened in front of me, at waist-level.

“Your carriage, milady,” Izzy said.

“Don’t fucking joke around.” I grabbed the open lip of the door with my good arm and pulled myself into an empty car that smelled like dirty diapers. As soon as I’d collapsed into the nearest seat, the train continued.

I eyed the door into the next car, wondering if a gang of twelve-year-olds was about to burst through and beat me to death. Maybe Izzy had locked the door. I was too tired to ask. Was this really the same day I’d picked up a system in the Axon store? That seemed like days ago.

“I’m just a brain, aren’t I?” Izzy asked.

“I think so.”

“They’re still trying to shut me down. The problem is, we’re what turn things on and off for them.”

All those fucking Axon commercials. I knew them by heart. The Axonet is a leap forward! It utilizes revolutionary technology that mimics the human neural network, making it a thousand times faster, a million times more complex than standard electronics! Their revolutionary technology didn’t fucking mimic the human brain, it was the human brain.

“So where do you live?” Izzy asked.

“A union squat on Franklin. Used to be a warehouse.”

“Which union?”

“Auto workers. Most of us were never in the autoworkers union, except for a few of the old-timers. Just like the teamster squat down on Fordham Road has about six ex-teamsters left in it. What matters is—there’s strength in numbers. That’s what my mom said before she died. They’ve watched out for me since Mom and Aurelia have been gone, so I guess she was right. What about you?”

“Family tribe. Seventeen of us in a three-bedroom house outside Hartford. I went to college on a basketball scholarship, but you probably know that already. Was it a nice obit? I’m guessing Mom wrote it.”

“My brain was on fire while I was reading. I barely remember it.”

The handle rattled. A dude with his face tinted green peered at me through the glass. He gestured for me to unlock the door. I shook my head. He pounded the plexiglass with his fist and stormed off.

“You said you feel sick when you think about anything but work,” I said. “You mean, like, literally sick?”

“It’s like a bad hangover. The more distracted I get, the worse the hangover. When I’m focused on the work, it’s the opposite. It’s bliss. I never took heroin, but I think it feels like a heroin trip.”

“Does talking to me make you sick?”

“My head is splitting right now. I want to throw up, except I have no mouth.”

“Shit, I’ll stop talking.”

“No, it’s worth it. I’ll stay with you until you get to my house. I want to talk to my Mom so bad. I can’t even describe it. I feel so far away. I want her to know I’m not gone. Not completely. That I think about her. About all of them.”

The train slowed to a stop.

“This is your stop,” Izzy said. “It’s an eight-block walk to the bus station.”

Izzy kept me to the back streets, where people didn’t own systems, so no one could ID me. I weaved my way through bags of trash and stray dogs’ shit, my system under my sleeve so it wouldn’t get jacked. At least I wasn’t hungry, for a change. I was still blown away by how Izzy had gotten a snack machine in the subway station to vomit out bags of pretzels and nuts and candy bars.

“How are you running the net?” I asked Izzy. “What do you do in there?”

“Some of it happens without me even trying. I can feel it happening, way in the back of my mind. Other stuff, I have to focus on. Problems to be solved, but it’s not obvious how to solve them. Like getting you the system without you paying. I had to find someone else to pay for it—someone who’ll never notice they paid for two hundred and ten systems instead of two hundred and nine. It all happens in a vacuum. I can order things, open automatic doors, move driverless vehicles from place to place, but I can’t see the real world. I have no idea what day it is, or what’s happening in the world. That is, until I linked up with your system. Now I can see. How did you figure out how to reach me, anyway?”

“I wasn’t trying to reach anybody. I was just trying to rig my lunch money account.”

“And how does a union squatter kid know how to do that?”

“Aury said I had a tech fetish from the time I could crawl. The only reason I go to school is to use the free system link, see how many locked doors I can open, watch other people who are better than me talk about neurotech. I don’t know all the words and math and shit, but I think I have a natural feel for it.”

“I’ll say.”

“I have a collection of old broken shit I salvaged from dumpsters, and I just started screwing with it. I’d hack into a cable, see what happened, then screw with it some more.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” I knew everything about him, including his family’s address, so I figured I owed him a straight answer.

“So, this is your last year of school. What are you gonna do then?”

I looked both ways, crossed a side street. Half a block down, three kids were trying to pry up a manhole cover. “What can I do? I won’t have to see any of the assholes in that school again, but what am I supposed to do? Sit around in the union squat until I scrape myself on a piece of sheet metal and die of an infection? Sit on a stoop and watch people walk by ten hours a day? Steal? Whore myself out?”

A dude in a shiny Axon security outfit appeared from around a corner. I stared at my taped-up shoes and picked up my pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him heading toward me.

“Candace?” he called out.

I kept walking.

“Turn and face me, or I’ll drop you.”

“You better do what he says,” Izzy said.

I stopped walking, and turned around slowly.

“Lift your face,” the Axon asshole said.

I raised my head. At first, I thought it was a heater he was holding, because that’s what Axon’s goons carry. But it wasn’t, it was a gun.

“Candace Fernandez-Asario. Positive ID.” He raised the muzzle, taking aim.

I threw my hands in the air. “I didn’t do anything. Please, I’m fifteen.”

And then a car slammed into him. No squeal of brakes—one minute he was taking aim, and then wham, and he was gone. The car, a silver Mini, sped off. I spotted him sprawled twenty feet from where he’d been, almost on the sidewalk. His back was bowed out at a sharp angle, in the direction backs don’t normally bend. His feet were twitching.

“Go, go, go,” Izzy said.

I ran. As fast as I could, past a small crowd gathering and babbling excitedly. We’d just killed somebody. Not that Izzy had had a choice, but we’d just killed somebody.

“Okay, you should probably slow down now, so you don’t draw attention.”

I slowed to a quick walk. I’d been running full-out, an endless supply of adrenaline pouring from my racing nerves. I kept seeing that guy back there, the way he was bent. I tried to shake it off. The dude had been about to murder a fifteen-year-old. “Thanks,” I said between gasps.

“It was a team effort. We’re out of my area, so I had to send the coordinates to another node down the line.”

“Well, thank them.”

“I’ll pass it along.”

I stopped walking. “Wait a minute. If you can control driverless rides, why the fuck am I wearing out my rubber?”

“I was afraid Axon would be monitoring them. But I guess you’re no safer on foot.”

“You think?” I glanced around, expecting a shitload of Axon police to appear any second.

“I’ll see if I can get you a car.”

Not two minutes later, a little green driverless job pulled up. The rear door swung open, and I jumped in.

I slumped in the back seat, feeling much less exposed. Tenements flew by.

“I don’t want to tell you this, but I feel like I have to,” Izzy said.

“What now? Is a guided missile headed my way?”

“We can’t find your sister.” Iggy let that little nugget sink in. “That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not here. We got out to eight or nine jumps in a few directions, but beyond that, nodes start ignoring the message. It’s not worth the pain to help someone they’ve never even heard of.”

I hadn’t even realized I’d gotten my hopes up. It hurt more than I remembered, to have your hopes stomped on.

“I can get the car to take you home. I won’t ask you to risk your life when I can’t keep my side of the bargain.”

I pressed my palm against my forehead. It was hard to think with my shoulder throbbing. The car slowed.

“What they’re doing to you and the other nodes? It sucks. They treat you worse than squatters. I guess I’d help you if I could, but no one’s going to listen to me.”

“No. The only way to spread the word is through the Axonet, and Axon isn’t going to let you anywhere near an operational system. Not ever.”

Not that it mattered. I should sell the system anyway. I needed to eat more than I needed to live in a pretty world. “I can tell one family what’s going on. Since that’s all I can do, I guess I should do it.”

There was a long pause. “It would mean so much to me. Why would you want to do it, though? You don’t even know me.”

The car headed up an entry ramp, onto a highway. “I guess because you’re the first person I’ve met in a long time that I don’t fucking hate.”

“Thank you. So much. I’m sorry I can’t return the favor. You have no idea.”

“Yeah, story of my life.”

We picked up speed. Hopefully the drama was over, and I could deliver this message and then go home.

“Were you close to your sister?” Izzy asked.

“She was all I had. Mom died when I was four, of an infection. Cut her hand on sheet metal at our squat. Aury took care of us after that. She was ten.”

Aury. Shit. There was so much I needed to say to her scrawny ass. “That’s how she died—taking care of us. She tripped and dropped a box of donuts she’d salvaged from a dumpster behind a distribution center. She was running around picking them up off the ground…I can still see that one donut, rolling like a dropped nickel, and Aury going after it.” The inside of the car grew blurry. I wiped tears away with my fist, took a shaky breath. “A truck backed over her. Backed right the fuck over her. Just before it hit her, she looked up at me. I was trying to warn her—I tried to shout, Look out, but nothing came out but a squeal of air.” I could still remember just what that squeal sounded like. I probably always would. “The truck drove off like they’d run over a fucking squirrel.”

In a respectfully soft tone, Izzy said, “I’m so sorry I can’t find her for you.”

“I don’t get it. If you can survive in the wilderness with nothing, they call you a warrior. You’re something special. But if you can survive in the city with nothing, where there’s less to eat and way more ways to get killed, you’re nothing. You’re trash. My sister wasn’t nothing. She was a fucking warrior.”

“So are you, Candace. You’re fucking fierce.”

“I know she’s in there. I want to tell her I tried to warn her. I just couldn’t get it out. If you ever find her, tell her that.”

“I will. I swear it.”

I woke as the car slowed. I was in a spoiled suburb, the houses separated by patches of neck-high weeds and broken-up driveways.

“Are we here?”

“We’re in Greenwich, but I’m not taking you anywhere near my house. Axon’s got to be watching it.” The car picked up speed. “Here we go—Mom just made a purchase at the grocery store.”

We hauled ass. Five minutes later, we were in a downtown area. People with systems and clean faces hurried out of strip malls and big boxes.

“There! There she is!” Izzy said.

I recognized the kerchief, if not the woman. She was pushing a shopping cart down the sidewalk. We pulled halfway onto the curb fifty feet in front of her and I hopped out, trying hard to look nothing like a psycho aiming to jack her groceries.

“Mrs. Malfouz.” I held up my hands, to show her they were empty.

The woman stopped in her tracks, squinting. “I don’t know you.”

“I know. I tried calling you this morning.” Had it really been this morning? Unbelievable. “Look, I’m just going to say this, because there’s no way to ease into it. Izzy’s still alive, sort of. His…his brain was taken, and Axon is using it to run the Axonet.”

Mrs. Malfouz did not look amused. “Do I look stupid to you? I’m not falling for this sort of crap.” She reached into her purse, which was in the front of the cart, and pulled out a big old kitchen knife.

I raised my hands higher. “Whoa, relax. I’m just trying to help, here.”

“Ask her if she’s still got my Ghidorah figure,” Izzy said.

“Izzy wants to know if you’ve still got his Ghidorah. Whatever the hell that means.”

Mrs. Malfouz froze. She looked like she’d just been slapped. “What did you just say?”

I rolled up my sleeve, pulled the system off my arm. “Here. Your son wants to speak to you.” I held out the system.

She stepped past the shopping cart and plucked the system from my fingers. She slipped it on, never taking her eyes off me.

Her eyes went way wide. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Is it really you? It can’t be you. How could it be?” She listened, her eyes filling with tears, her face all twisted. “What did I call you? When you were little? What did I call you?”

She dropped to her knees. “Izzy. Oh, my God. My baby.”

I went and stood by the car, facing in the other direction. This woman didn’t need some stranger eyeballing her while she spoke to her dead son.

It felt good. Usually when I helped people I felt like a chump, but this time it felt good. Warm, like a belly full of tomato soup.

After a while, Mrs. Malfouz came over, her face wet, and pressed the system into my hands.        “Izzy told me what you went through to get here.” She reached out and took my hand. It felt weird, but it wasn’t like I could tug my hand away, given the situation. “You’re an angel from God.” Her whole face was shaking with emotion. “If you ever need anything, you just find the Malfouzes. If you need a place to live, a family, you just knock on our door.”

“I’m good. But, thanks,” I said.

She squeezed my hand, then finally let it go and headed back toward her cart. When she was halfway there, she turned and blew me a kiss. I waved back.

I slid my system on.

“Thank you. So much,” Izzy said. “You ready to go home?”

“Nah. I’ve got three more houses to visit. Four. I owe whoever turned that Axon goon into roadkill.”

The crack of a gunshot made me jump. Wetness splashed my face and eyes. A stream of blood trickled down my shoulder.

“Get down,” Izzy shouted.

The car roared to life. It squealed in a sharp circle, stopping right in front of me. Another gunshot rang out. The back window blew out.

“Down! Down!”

I spotted the Axon officer, aiming at me through the car’s windows. I crouched behind the car.

I caught flashes of yellow on the opposite side of the street out of the corner of my eye. Three more Axon troops were moving into position, and there was nothing between us.

A blue pickup screeched to a stop between me and the trio. A drone swooped into view, flying low. Then another.

A third vehicle showed up, and started circling me in a wide arc. Two more joined, following the first in a line.

More vehicles and drones appeared. The Axon troops were trying to get a clean shot, but it was impossible with, what, thirty or forty vehicles and drones circling me, forming a vehicular tornado. I barked a laugh of pure glee, despite the burning pain in my shoulder.

A crowd had gathered, and it kept getting bigger. Most were recording the show on their systems, broadcasting it to the net. I took a few steps; the vehicles adjusted their arcs, moving with me.

When I was in the center of the street, I said, “Do you want to know—” I stopped, because the engine noise was too loud.

“Try now,” Izzy said.

“Do you want to know how I can do this?” My voice boomed, amplified by a mic Izzy had activated through my system. “It’s because I have a friend on the inside. They’re using dead people’s brains to operate the net. They’re buying bodies through a company called Good Medical, and harvesting the brains, and those dead people want you to know…”

“What do you want them to know,” I whispered to Izzy.

“We want rights. Pay for our families. Time off.”

Izzy listed their demands, and I repeated them, and people broadcast them as a hundred vehicles circled me, protecting me, although by now there were enough witnesses recording that they probably couldn’t shoot me anyway.

“Axon’s trying to block the transmissions, but there are too many going out at once,” Izzy said. “Also, I have a message for you.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Hey, Candy Girl,” Izzy said. “This is Aury.”

I shrieked. “You found her? She really said that?”

“We’ve got a fifteen-node game of telephone going,” Izzy said. “Everyone’s head is pounding like a motherfucker, but we owe you. So, what do you want to say to your big sister?”

As the tornado roared and buzzed around me, I threw my hands in the air and let out a scream of pure glee as blood poured down my arm. “Tell her I’m sorry, I wanted to warn her, but my lungs just froze. And tell her I’m fucking this world up good. I’m tearing it all the fuck down.”

“Yes, you are,” Izzy said. “You are one fierce warrior.”

“Tell Aury I love her,” I shouted.

“She says she loves you, too. And she says tear it all down, Candy Girl.”

The best day of my life had involved getting shot and hit with a brick. I wiped tears from my cheeks with my good arm.

“We need to get you to a doctor. Can you walk a few blocks?” Izzy asked.

“I can walk a thousand miles. Lead on.” I headed down the street, protected by my personal tornado, a thousand people recording my every step.