As my limo wound through the rubble-strewn boulevards of Paris (talk about words I never expected would apply to me), I distracted myself from the ridiculous danger I was walking into with polite chatter. I asked the driver if he missed the Eiffel Tower. Were these hot temps about typical for the season? Did he have any children?

"Ah oui, four sons." The man raised so many fingers over the headrest.

"That must keep you hopping," I said. "How do they all get along?"

He did a side-to-side hand wag. "This violence everywhere, it does not help. But my wife has better tricks for making them..."

He slicked his thumb and forefinger together for the word.

I said, "Behave?"

"Yes, yes. To not kill the other." He smiled and switched lanes. "Et vous? You are American—it is said that American children are loud. Is it true? Are your children quite loud?"

I felt my lips press, but refused to take it personally—his assumption that I had kids. Between this wig and the brow prosthetic, I was barely me. Right?

"You quit noticing after a few years," I said. "I'll bet they're in the same decibel range as yours."

He huffed lightly, accelerating toward a tunnel marked ROCHE RIVARD.

My breezy answer notwithstanding, I did worry about Zach and Karen. As I'd been saying goodbyes, about to leave for my second international trip in a month, they'd both felt oddly disconnected. Zach kept asking when my flight was—"Closer to two? When're you probably hitting the road?"—like he had big plans for my absence.

Karen hugged me hard but was preoccupied with finishing her dolls' "safety fortress"—a cardboard and tape structure that already encompassed one whole corner of the living room. It still needed a boudoir and beading room, and a bulletproof roof for the second story.

Granny insisted they were fine.

"You aren't meant to know every little drip dropping through their heads," she'd say, putting her hair up in curlers for bed. "We never did, and look—we raised the Greatest Generation."

The taxi emerged from the tunnel, out of Paris proper now and in the Boulonge Woods. Even inside the car, I felt immediately cooler. Heavy limbs draped over the expressway—several literally across the road, such that we had to drive around on the shoulder.

Six winding miles later, the road straightened and a hulking tower rose before us. It was primarily black glass, with stone shoulders and a barbed-wire skirt. Small crafts hovered about its upper reaches like flies buzzing a stallion's head.

My veins thinned. "Is that..."

The driver did not look back. "Oui, Madame, Roche Rivard."

I took several deliberate breaths, imagining oxygen flowing through my brain, washing away the dread.

I can't believe they talked me into this.

Roche Rivard had security like Saturn has rings. A quarter-mile out, I was required to show identification at a guard tower. This permitted me through an electrified fence and into a labyrinth of lanes winding through various sensors—like an automated car wash, only with infrared and invisible rays rather than suds and water jets.

The driver said, "Nothing in your bag, one hopes?"

I clutched my distressed leather satchel, thinking of the time Zach slipped an XBOX game into my purse and the supermarket exit bleated at us.

"One hopes," I agreed.

I passed through the final checkpoint on foot, paying my driver— "Bon chance," he said crookedly—and providing the name of the Rivard person I had come to see. A severe woman in epaulets had me wait in a windowless antechamber with foam, cream-colored walls.

Soundproof? Bug-proof?

Five itchy minutes later, Yves Pomeroy tottered in.

"Excellentment!" he said. "So thrilled I am to show you Rivard LLC in action."

His eyes traveled my body in way that, despite his advanced age, creeped me out. I'd worn a navy blazer, snug but professional jeans, flats, and the leather bag. Together with the auburn hair, it needed to add up to one Silicon Valley executive.

I knew I looked good...but good enough to pass for CIO of a seventy-million dollar social media startup?

Yves Pomeroy led me from the antechamber to the stupendous Roche Rivard lobby—big as a train station, a hive of streaking men and women, walls adorned with live video feeds and bright electronic charts.

Yves approached a receptionist. (The most attractive, I noted.) "I have Mademoiselle Jansen here! Her company is considering a large investment in CyberSafe, and we are touring the facility."

His palsy became violent, knocking my elbow. I worried his nerves would betray us, but the receptionist paid no mind. She entered information off my passport, a high-quality fake obtained by Durwood, and used a 3D printer to produce a badge.

Yves pinned the badge on my breast.

"Er—thanks," I said. "I could've done that myself."

He bowed from the waist. "Not at all."

The badge was, I saw now, a wafer-thin device, electronic but flexible. Its face showed my (fake) name and a timer, presently ticking down from sixty minutes.

We needed to go...but I couldn't pull my gaze from the north wall of the lobby. A single, seamless LCD tracked various revenue measures, the company's stock price (ticker symbol: RIV), and dozens of Objectifs Centraux in a stunning holographic display, something right out of Star Wars.

Yves saw my gaze. "The Grand Planifier," he explained. "One's progress is constantly monitored and reported upon."

He raised his own badge, upon which four red lines flashed "EN RETARD!!" I wasn't sure if it was happening or my imagination, but the lines seemed to bend off the badge toward their whispy representations high above.

There were other marvels—drones carrying manila folders, VR portals to satellite offices in places like Beijing and Mexico City. If Willy Wonka built a corporate headquarters, this would be it.

Yves tapped my badge. "We have just fifty-eight minutes to conduct our business."

I asked what happened if we went overtime.

"If the badge is still out at time zero, it emits a deafening beacon," he said. "Security officers will arrive in a matter of seconds."

Yves began guiding me to the elevator banks, but the receptionist called after us.

"Excusez! Excusez-moi!" She paused to listen to a sleek wireless earbud. "Miss Rivard requests a word with you at the beginning of your tour, Mr. Pomeroy. With you and your Californian guest."

Yves and I froze. Had she put snark into the word "Californian?" Maybe it was just her accent.

"Of course, of course." Yves quickly masked the alarm in his face. "What an honor, to receive a moment with our great Mademoiselle Rivard!"

I managed to bob my head in agreement.

As we boarded an elevator going up, rather than down to where Enterprise Software was, Yves whispered, "It cannot be helped. The scrutiny is high."

The plan had been for us to probe, under guise of a marketing tour, the low-level Enterprise Software staff on CyberParle. Had the recent work introduced any known vulnerabilities? How significant had Thérèse Laurent's involvement been?

Were the changes reversible?

This was dangerous enough, intelligence gathering in a building Human Rights Watch considered "a de facto detention center." Now I had to meet Fabienne Rivard face-to-face?

What if the wig didn't work and she recognized me from Davos? What if she had sniffed out the coded messages between the guys and Yves Pomeroy?

The elevator zoomed skyward, trees blurred in the glass sides.

In hushed tones, Yves said, "Total confidence is required when one deals with Fabienne Rivard. The woman can smell dishonesty—it is her gift."

As the floor indicated climbed, I set my jaw. I thought about Hatch at the Nowhere tattoo parlor, and faking it with Piper Jackson at eDeed.

No sweat. I can beat her.

I had to beat her—to help Zach stay out of trouble, to keep Karen tethered to the real world instead of swallowed whole by doll escapism.

The elevator stopped at Eighty-Three. I was surprised Fabienne's office wasn't on the top floor (there were 117), but Yves explained that its precise location rotated every six weeks to thwart assassination plots.

They found Fabienne reading a slim novel.

"Yves, bon," she said. "I am told you have a visitor. Please introduce us."

She laid her book face down, cracking its spine, to take my hand. Fabienne was every bit as tall as she'd seemed onstage in Davos—I felt like I was shaking the foreleg of a praying mantis.

"Blapblap.com," she said.

I waited, but she said no more.

"Right, that's what we're calling it," I volunteered. "We're going for a younger demographic, and the name polled well with eighteen to twenty-five year olds."

Fabienne looked to Yves, which made his palsy worsen again, then back to me. "Your company is in Silicon Valley, where the best programmers in the world live. Yet you would outsource antivirus protection to Rivard. Why?"

"Uh, well, CyberSafe is the leading product in the space. Our programmers don't—that is, they aren't virus experts."

Her angular face turned to show a different side, the skin seeming purple here. "What is your strategy for the data loss?"

"Obviously we hope to avoid it," I said. "So far our code's been strictly in house and we've had no issues, and we're hoping with CyberSafe to keep it that way."

I liked the answer—it'd left my tongue smoothly and sounded like a line from a commercial—but Fabienne didn't relent.

"Doubtless you have heard rumors," she said, "that our software plays some role."

"Role?"

"Oui. In the data loss."

I hadn't been expecting her to come out and articulate this, but it was a perfectly valid question. I needed an answer.

"I—I was told by Mr. Pomeroy"—opening my shoulders, inviting Yves to chime in—"these were slurs propagated by competitors, jealous of Rivard's growth and dominant market position."

The answer seemed to please Fabienne. She circled back around her desk, a slim oval of some semitransparent alloy, and picked up her novel.

She read for three minutes.

Yves said, "If there is nothing more, perhaps we will begin our tour..."

Before Fabienne could answer, the door opened and an impressive woman with platinum blond hair entered.

"Excusez-moi," she said, "it couldn't be helped, I have just learned—"

She stopped at the sight of me and Yves Pomeroy. "A tour, Pomeroy? You are giving a tour?"

Yves took a step back—she had him by three inches and a good thirty pounds. "Yes, Thérèse. A tour."

"As your director of technical operations," the woman said, "I must be included in all client tours."

"You declined several invitations last week, so I only thought—"

"Last week, yes." Thérèse Laurent's consonants boomed about the room. "Since then, my schedule has freed up considerably."

Yves's throat quivered. He balked for another moment, then seemed to buck himself up.

"We were just speaking of CyberSafe. I was preparing to explain our recent improvements, which have made the suite more secure than ever—but I am sure you know the technical aspects best."

His eyes twinkled, set deep in wrinkled sockets. "Being, as you are, director of technical operations. Oui?"

Thérèse shifted between solid legs. "It is true, we have closed many vulnerabilities. I won't bore the woman with details."

"Bore her!" Yves insisted. "She is of Silicon Valley, she will understand. The codebase migrated to a different programming language last fall, n'est-ce pas? Do you recall which?"

Thérèse said, "Perl, I believe."

The old man filled his cheeks jovially. "In fact, Python. So close you were! Same first letter."

Fabienne Rivard watched them bicker with a relishing smirk. She walked to stand behind Thérèse, laying one hand on the shoulder of her dress and slipping the other in other palm.

Have you ever gotten stuck in the middle of weird office politics, and wished you could melt into the carpet? People ten levels above you taking passive-aggressive shots at each other while the rest of the meeting attendees twiddle their thumbs?

That was me now.

Thérèse closed her eyes at Fabienne's touch, then answered, "You are the man, Yves. Naturally you are correct, and know the best."

Yves blushed furiously at the suggested of gender insensitivity. "No, that is not fair, I merely—"

"You merely attempt to humiliate and discredit me before a client." Thérèse said. "It is sad, from one with your tenure at Rivard. This is why we must never stop fighting for change."

She and Fabienne withdrew a step from the old man, as though his billowy hair were a toxic cloud.

A chime sounded from somewhere below my chin. When I glanced down, my badge had changed color to yellow.

Yves, seeming happy for the distraction, said, "Eh bien, one carries on! The tour must begin. Will you be joining us, Mademoiselle Laurent? Or do the two of you have more pressing business?"

The women shared an extended look. Thérèse Laurent made a brush-off gesture and we turned to go.

Fabienne called after us, "I hope you will be impressed. In these times, no company can match the offerings of Rivard LLC."

I pivoted at the threshold to smile my assent, or understanding—whatever I needed to do to escape this bizarre situation—and didn't see the brawny man until we slammed into each other.