There was no mention of eDeed in the news, either online or on TV. The tagging of the Rector Street subway station appeared in channel six's nightly Unrest Roundup, but just a quick image—no details or mention of the Mice. Maybe, I thought, Jason Keiter had discovered something amiss and restored the data. Maybe Piper's assertion that the thumb drive "didn't do temporary" was pure bravado, and some whiz-bang antivirus software had purged it.

Except I didn't really believe this.

I blogged in the morning and played Candyland with Karen after school, but distractedly. I kept thinking of what Quaid had said about tipping points, imagining where this chaos was headed. What if Piper Jackson could wipe out stock balances? Bank balances? What if she could erase criminal records? Looting had quadrupled in the last three months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 77%. How much worse could it get?

I imagined Josiah underneath a bare bulb in some alley, face twisted in a devilish grin. Nibble, nibble. Until the whole sick scam rots through.

I expected the guys to call and pressure me, but they didn't. In fact, I didn't hear from them all day. They had seemed peevish with each other leaving last night. Had they fought? Maybe Durwood had convinced Quaid to back off. Maybe they were devising a different plan.

Or maybe Quaid was simply at a bar somewhere. Maybe he'd given up on me.

Do you ever have these days where your head is all questions and no answers? Outside of my family and the barista who prepared my chai latte, I had talked to nobody all day. My stray thoughts and ideas hadn't been aired, the positive vibes encouraged, the negative ones pushed down like good friends always do. Each hour felt darker than the next.

Finally I couldn't take it. It was eleven o'clock, Granny and the kids asleep, the house stiflingly quiet. I found the slip of paper Piper had given me.

I didn't scheme out what I would say, or think to use the burner the guys had given me for all Mice communications—which they monitored. I called on my personal cell.

Piper answered on the second ring. "Who's this?"

"Hi, Piper. It's Molly from ..." I was standing in my living room, nudging a bin of Barbies under a chair. "You know, Molly."

"Why you calling."

"Well, I was just thinking about yesterday. It—there wasn't anything on the news. Did it not work?"

After a pause, she said, "Nah. It worked. Getting massively hacked isn't the type of news companies publicize."

I finished tidying and sat on a corner of the couch. "I guess not."

"This conversation ain't right for the phone. You feel me?"

"I do," I said. "No, I know, I just wondering ..." I played her last response back in my head and realized it could be taken as an invitation. "... actually, could we meet in person? I just have a few questions."

"About yesterday?"

"Yes. Mostly."

I braced myself to hear no, what was I, insane?, it was almost midnight! Though Piper said nothing at first, skepticism blared over the line. What could I say? What psychological techniques drew down a person's guard, disposed them to trust?

Candor. Displays of honesty and personal conviction.

I continued, "I want to be in the loop. I deserve to know where this is heading. I participated yesterday, I was there for Ted Blackstone. "

"You miss what I just said about talking on the phone?"

"Let's meet then. I blog for change, and that's why I joined—but I need to know it's change in the right direction."

Away from the phone, I gulped, awaiting her response.

Piper agreed.

Forty minutes later, after changing the alarm system passcode by one digit to thwart any attempt by Zach to sneak out (the screech will eventually wake Granny), I drove to a northern rest stop of the New Jersey turnpike. Driving during the unrest was nerve-racking, doubly so on the turnpike, but I didn't care.

Piper and I met as arranged in the Roy Rogers. I found her sitting at a back table, dark clothes, no laptop, before a tray of flaccid fries.

She said, "You got about five questions."

I sat opposite in a red plastic chair. "Why did you agree to meet me?"

"This counts, question number one."

I considered. "Fine."

Piper dipped one corner of her mouth. "You think, you got doubts. I respect that."

People said I had big green eyes, but hers looked humongous just now, rich-brown wells of expression.

"Fair enough. Question number two?"

She nodded.

"That thing we used, on the thumb drive," I said. "What was it? Like a computer virus?"

She glanced to either side. Though it was late, the restaurant was busy—families bleary from driving, huddles of kids her age in no apparent hurry.

"I call it the kernel."

"Kernel? Like popcorn?"

"Not like popcorn."

"What does it do? How does it get rid of the data?"

Piper explained in gruff, opaque terms that the kernel anchored itself to core software in the host, then identified any datastore and blanked it out. Fundamentally all data was made up of zeroes and ones; after the kernel, it went straight zeroes.

"But what about backups?" I asked.

She folded a fry into her mouth. "Second it hits the system, it's infected. Instantaneously. Zeroes, baby."

"How did you make it? Is there an antidote, some way to reverse the kernel?"

Piper pushed her tray aside. "By my count, that's question number seven and question number eight."

Before I could object, she added, "That's Algernon stuff anyway. Couldn't tell you if I wanted to."

Now I remembered Garrison using that worc during the eDeed mission. "What does that mean, Algernon?"

"Algernons are inner circle. Ever read that book, Flowers for Algernon? Algernons are a subset of Mice."

"Who's in it? You and Hatch?"

"Yeah. Few others. We don't advertise. After the Blackstone deal, it's only Algernons get to see Josiah."

She whispered the leader's name like it were some Native American spell. I glanced about the fast-food joint, then asked, "How do you become one?"

Piper exhaled. "You step up. You make an offering."

"Offering?"

"Right. Find us a high-value, high-impact target."

"For an attack?"

"The means of exploitation is our call. You provide the info."

I pressed my purse to my side, thinking. What sort of offering could I make? Durwood could case any target imaginable, and I could pass off the tactical goods. Just how "high-value, high-impact" would it need to be? I didn't want to facilitate some bombing or broad crippling of the world's data infrastructures.

"What's an example? I don't need like the combination to the safe holding the Hope Diamond, right?"

Piper said, "Notice how Blackstone's wife and kids were gone?"

I nodded.

"Well." She jangled a keychain. "Somebody hacked his travel agent."

As Piper got ready to go, lumping together greasy wrappers and sucking down the last of a drink, a crazy notion swirled through my brain. I didn't want to go back to the guys and strategize. I didn't want to hear Quaid's lecture on guts and moral relativism and the shortcomings of my heart. I didn't want to watch Durwood brood in the shadow of his hat's brim, then tell us the best plan of action.

I was the one who had been living on the razor's edge with the Mice. I had won Hatch over at Nowhere Tattoo and improvised my way through eDeed. Quaid or Durwood couldn't have succeeded in these situations—and I felt sure it wasn't just a matter of age.

Conviction beating through me, I laid my hand over Piper's keys.

"Okay," I said. "I'm ready."

She squinted dubiously at our joined hands. "For what?"

"To make my offering."