We jolt backward. Tires squeal. I am hurled against the wheel-well and Mikhail cartwheels into the file cabinet, and now we're fishtailing, the skidding van tossing us opposite, my arm smeared into my cheek. I barely know left from right or up from down. Glass shatters outside but not our windows—maybe this thing is bulletproof? A keening alarm. Sour smoke in my nose.

Who is driving? I crawl forward to see. Mikhail grabs my hoodie.

His grip is fierce but I work myself free, kneeing him in the nose. Then barrel-roll to the far side of the cabin and struggle up.

He stands too. Bleeding, haggard, his face lumpy for the abuse I've doled out. Next to the crate now, he finds his own weapon.

"So?" I say, woozy, my field of vision rolling left. "Not like it's loaded."

He lifts a ridged object roughly the size of a crayon box. Slams it into the gun.

Before either of us can say another word, the van screeches forward. I lose my stomach as my feet fly out from underneath. My head slams the metal floor. I'm crumpled in a fetal position.

We accelerate sharply, then seem to brake, then whip 180 degrees around. Then with a concussive roar, we stop. I take a gauzy look around.

The rear doors are shredded, a steaming tangle of vinyl and metal. I am curled atop Mikhail's high-lacing boots. He didn't fall.

Why didn't he fall?

I peer up. His chin is slumped to his chest. Underneath it, the triangular tip of a metal slide. Four inches of it—glistening red, protruding from his yellow polo shirt. He is dripping. On me.

I squirm away and tug at the red on my hoodie, desperate, grossed out.

He's dead, oh man the guy is dead! I look into the slack face and panic. I have seen dead bodies before but never ones I made dead—or was present for the death of, or whatever's happened here.

What did happen? I pant for a solid minute.

Bulgaria or no, this guy has a family. Mother and father. A girl he kissed first.

My body throbs. My lungs take air in giant, quivering pulls. I hear a slow wheeze somewhere, below the chugging of the generator. (Which endured the crash.) I can't pinpoint the source. Radiator? Gas leak?

I raise myself to an elbow. Questions swirl through my mind, vague notions of jail and courtrooms and orderlies packing up Mom's things, but one is clear: who is behind the wheel?

A steel, subway-style door partitions the driver- and passenger-seats from the mangled cabin. I look through its oblong window.

I am afraid ... but my fear is maxing out, changing into a different thing. It's becoming permanent, a living part of me the way it used to around gangs or when hard drugs were being exchanged.

My fingers roam for that gun of Mikhail's.

If Jim Davis bursts through the door—if anybody in a yellow polo shirt does—I will shoot. I won't have no choice. Whatever this gig is, I know too much about it. Too much to be left alive. I wonder if the van's mad-pinball flight was an attempt to take me off-site, someplace where I could be disposed of. Maybe they finally decided I couldn't be bent to their will and would only ever be a hindrance to Blackquest 40.

"Yo."

Even through steel, even in a single syllable, I know that baritone. Like clean water rinsing my wounds.

"Cecil!" I rush forward leaving the gun. "It's you— yeah baby, it's you! How are you here?"

He squeezes through the subway door and we hug. His big belly is a pillow between us. I grip his surplus jacket tight, getting blood all over. A chuckle passes from his chest to my ear.

"You said to meet. I was waiting behind the dumpster. I heard fighting, I came. Figured if there was trouble, you was probably involved."

"I am so glad it's you, Cec. So glad."

We hold each other. The only longer embrace I remember is the day we checked Mom into Crestwood Psychiatric.

He nods at Mikhail's body. "Who this? Don't look like a programmer."

This crashes me back to reality. To the nightmare of this new life, in which a man died while I was committing a felony—breaking and entering. Which means murder. Which means the next time I see Mom, if there is a next time, will be through Plexiglas.

It's weird and dazzlingly unfair that my life has arrived here. For years I have worried I was wasting myself in an office. Sure I volunteer weekends, sure I started carebnb, but my actual jobs—at Google, now at Codewise—have never lined up with my passions. They followed naturally from my field of study, and I enjoyed the challenges and (if I'm being honest) praise that was lavished upon me. But I never cared. I took the conventional route. The safe route, you'd think, compared with a thousand others I might have traveled from Golden Gate Park.

"Not a programmer," I agree.

I explain Blackquest 40 to Cecil, tell him about the Bulgarian passport, nod around at the surrounding weaponry. Cecil listens with the imperturbable air of a person who knows violence.

"Could be everything takes care of itself," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"They ain't calling the police, way you describe it. They want quiet."

I work my tongue around my cheek. "Yeah. That might be true."

We stand silent in the wreckage. In noxious, thick-hot smoke. I don't understand how or why, but I know in my bones what this is about: money. The rending of the material world in pursuit of money.

"Listen Lil Deb," Cecil says. "I can' exactly hang out. Cops come around, find all this? Homeless man in the middle. Black homeless man."

"Right."

"I'm'a help with the body."

"The what?"

"The body. Man six-foot-four at least. That's a job."

It takes a few more exchanges before I understand Cecil means to help me move the body. More specifically, hide the body.

"But ... should we?"

"You got a better idea, I'm listening."

I consider suggesting we go straight to the police and take our chances. On reflection, though, those chances seem pretty rotten.

Half-dazed by the surreality of what we're doing, I help drag Mikhail's body to the dumpster, fortunately right across from the garage exit. Cecil props his cart to hide us from Second Ave. He takes all the weight—I basically get the shins down—and backpedals to the green receptacle, lips tight with effort. I circle ahead to prop the grooved lid. On the count of three, we heave the body onto a bed of bulging trash bags. Cecil drags a few over to obscure it. Then for show, he jiggles free a splintered office chair and props it among his stuff. Sneers skeptically, then hoists it back into the dumpster.

He gestures to my hoodie, which is caked with blood. I peel it off and toss it inside too. My arms feel ten pounds lighter. I catch a glimpse of my hair reflected in a window, all smooshed. Instinctively I spike it back up between my fingers.

Cecil disengages his cart's wheel-lock. "Want to come along? Get away from these fools."

I look beyond him to the street and open sky. I am thinking clearer now—the physical exertion, the passage of time.

"Nah," I say. "They might not miss their goon— he was at his post— but they'll come looking for me. They'll figure out what happened and pin it on me. On us. I need to figure out what their game is."

He nods, opens one massive arm for a hug. "What you gonna say about the van?"

I collapse in the heft of his belly. "Nothing." I wrap what my arms can manage of his back. "I'll just keep my mouth shut."

"That ain't your strength."

In spite of everything, I smile. "Be safe."

"And kind."

"And kind."

As Cecil disappears up Second Ave, the warmth I feel from our ritual parting words fades. In its place comes dread. A cold, heavy knowledge that my range of outcomes has just shrunk tragically. The best I can be today is a killer. The worst? I don't want to imagine. Since the days of Apple IIe, the blessing of technology has been scale. The ability to spread code instantly at zero cost, multiplying the impact of a lone creator, leapfrogging brick-and-mortar stores, shattering barriers that have protected industries—and people—for centuries.

Whoever conceived Blackquest 40 understands this. Is counting on it. This software they're asking us to build, forcing us to build, has aspirations far beyond Codewise Industries.

It's not till I reach the elevator bank that I realize I never asked Cecil about carebnb.