When Paul's face lifts to mine, it has a new tint. The shade is in that same family of dough, but darker. Golden-gray. His eyes aren't poised outward, on alert for fault or impertinence from me; they're focused in.

It is a look of resignation. "No. Blackquest 40 can't be an exercise."

And his palms find his thighs, and he's pushing up to his feet, following me out of his office's second door to the hallway not visible to Elite's posse. Relief floods my brain and battered muscles.

Yes—he IS a sentient being capable of logic!

We rush down the hall, passing a utility closet and printer bank and the kitchenette. I plant my lead foot at the kitchenette ... but decide no, that half-wall won't fly. Paul crashes into me from behind. We pick ourselves up and clamber on.

I just need someplace that's safe for five minutes so I can give Paul my info and theories. Now that he has bought into the premise, there's hope. Probably I'll be locked up by the time Susan arrives (when is that Davos flight getting in?), but he can be whispering in her ear, making sure Kotanchek and Davis don't pull the wool over her eyes.

The hallway ends at an elevator bank. Three-quarters of the way there is a small conference room whose door is papered-over. The paper was for last Friday's staffing discussion—brown, torn off a roll and masking-taped up to guard against busybodies like Jared who try to know everybody's review grade.

I bolt inside, waving Paul in too, slamming the door after us.

"Port 9009," I say, gripping his shoulder. "That's were you start."

I explain about Elite's data blockade and how to circumvent it. He can send and receive regular HTTP data using port 9009. Just tweak the connection strings for whatever web browser, then bang!, you're online. Start with Bulgaria. The name was "Mikhail Stepanoff." Find his records, figure out what devilry he's done, then look for a link to Jim Davis.

Paul smears a hand across his mouth. "I disagree."

"Oh come on, we don't have time to—"

"Carter is the key. This whole operation is right out of Carter's playbook."

"Playbook?" My eyes keep stealing to the brown paper, which won't fool anyone for long. "Blackquest 40 seems like once-in-a-generation lunacy to me; who's got something like this in a playbook?"

"The ambition of it," Paul says. "The scale. Carter always has a hustle working, each bigger than the last."

"Look, I don't like CK Slick. I'd love to strike a match off that lacquered hairdo and watch him Nae Nae—but I have to say, even he seems a little skittish about where Jim Davis has taken this. I think Davis is our Bad Guy Number 1-A."

I plant my index finger on the circular table, which houses a desktop computer and standard UFO-looking conference phone. Aeron chairs are spread about the room.

"Davis is intense," Paul says, "but intense in the service of results. He came to me when you were missing, you know."

"What, to harass you?"

"No. For my help. He knew we were on track to miss the checkpoint, and he was desperate. It's my sense that he's under tremendous pressure himself."

Ooh, the poor baby. Maybe he needs a second stressball for his offhand. "What kind of help?"

"He asked my opinion on how to bring you on board. How to motivate you."

"Yeah? Did you suggest fewer assaults?"

Paul smiles, leans a khakied hip into the table. "I told him traditional methods wouldn't work. I told him underneath that tough veneer of yours, all you care about is people. The welfare of others."

I feel a pang of warmth for my boss. The remark naturally brings to mind carebnb, which may or may not be on its way to revolutionizing the unhoused problem. I realize in a blink that Paul knows I spend more time on carebnb than my contract allows. He may even know I'm running its data through Codewise servers unasked. I see six months of his burbling lips and pained forehead rubs in a new light.

"And his takeaway from that," I say, the warmth passing, "was to humiliate Prisha on the basis of her race and gender. The fact that he only did it to get to me doesn't make it less revolting."

"Fair enough," Paul says. "Davis and his people—they're ruthless. I can't imagine what's driven Carter into bed with them."

"I can." Remembering that Prisha garbage has my face hot again. "Money."

I feel something in the walls. Creaking, swelling—the groan of movement starting. Then footsteps. Still far off, but they won't be for long.

Elite.

And Paul and I are nowhere near having a post-my-incarceration plan. I glance again to the brown paper covering the door glass. If Jim Davis thinks about it for more than two seconds, he'll know exactly where we are.

I scan the room, spotting the PC. "These conference-room machines all have multi-card readers, yes?"

Paul has wobbled back into a corner. "M—most do."

I simultaneously knock the mouse with a knuckle to kill the screen-saver and dive underneath the table to the computer's console. It's dark. I have to check for the card reader by feel.

Slick case ... optical drive, no ... wait, go back ... here, some slits!

The face of a multi-card reader. From my pants pocket I grab my SIM card—the one I fished out of my phone before slinging the phone at Davis—and wedge the pinkie-nail-sized card into the smallest slit.

Computer innards stir. An indicator flickers green. I pop back above the tabletop to check the monitor, and am ecstatic to see the contents of my SIM card onscreen.

The file structure displays folders for my cellphone pics, videos, emails, and what I really need right this second: scripts for controlling Raven.

Paul has recovered and now slides me the keyboard. There are more than a hundred commands with block-print "R" icons. The subset fitting on the screen now ranges from FIND_SUN to FOLLOW_AND_FILM_JARED. As I scroll the list, both elbows and half my chest urge over the table.

Paul asks what I'm doing.

"Buying us time," I say.

"How?"

"Raven's going to draw them away." I find BASE_RC_MODE_CONSOLE, click. A new window appears containing the drone's livestream and graphical joystick control. "I'll have her pretend she's tracking my GPS signal. Maybe she can lead them down to the garage."

"Why would they follow her?"

"Because they think she knows where I am."

"What'll make them think that?"

I squeeze my entire face at Paul's stickler questions—the plan makes perfect sense in my head and I'm busy watching the livestream, dragging controls, navigating Raven up the hall—before realizing he's right. I slump back from the keyboard, leaving Raven in a hover outside Paul's office.

"Grr. I need her to vocalize the command. 'FINDING DEB GPS,' something."

Paul asks whether Raven usually vocalizes commands.

"No, but they don't know that." Struck with an idea, I replace my fingers on keys and mouse. "An audio file! We can record one here and shoot it over to her. She can play it out her speakers, I'll crank the volume."

On the livestream, Elite yellow shirts are approaching Paul's office. The group has shrunk, no Katie Masterson now—girls apparently unwelcome in their vigilante roundups. The remaining hard guys lean through the doorway, heads quick, looking up/down/left/right. The finely-coiffed head of Graham turns Jim Davis's way; he seems to be dissuading Davis from entering the office. They argue, then Davis thumps Graham in the chest—whoa!—and powers inside. He stalks about briefly before finding the second door and motioning the others to follow.

I pull the PC microphone near and speak into it, "Locate Deb GPS."

After I click the Stop rectangle, an audio file appears on the desktop. I drag it onto the Raven icon. It uploads in a half-second. I am about to issue the command to play it when Paul objects again.

"Aren't they going to recognize your voice?"

Double grr. He's right again.

Reading my consternation, Paul asks whether she has text-to-speech capability.

"Unfortunately not," I say. "Stinkin' three-minute feature enhancement ... but we don't have three minutes." I shove the microphone across the table. "You—it's gotta be you, Paul. You say the command."

He recoils as if the mic—black, goosenecked—has fangs and can strike him. "They've heard my voice too."

"No offense," I say, "because I mean this in the best possibly way? But your voice has a natural robo-synthesized quality to it. It's perfect."

His mouth puckers in an expression I imagine was his date to every high-school dance, but he speaks the command. I zap the audio file up to Raven, confirm receipt, then check her livestream.

I have to pan around to find Elite—they have left Paul's office and started down the hall we're in. Using a feather touch on the mouse, I guide Raven in pursuit. She hums along eighteen inches below the ceiling, straight (auto-course-correcting slight finger slips), gaining ground.

When the yellow shirts are directly underneath, I instruct Raven to surrender altitude. She runs so quiet they might not notice her up high.

Paul says, "That's us."

His eyes bug at the livestream. On Elite's left side, the very next door has glass that's covered in brown paper.

It's now or never: Jim Davis's square jaw has paused, fixed in the direction of our door. He still hasn't noticed Raven overhead. I click back over to the commands off my SIM card and run COUGH_LOUD.

Raven performs a series of hardware restarts—fan, hard disk—that produce a second or so of mechanical scratch. She's so close I hear through the wall.

On the livestream, four faces whip up.

Paul and I look at each other. We whisper at once, "Now!"

I issue the command to play the audio file. A beat later, the voice of Paul—hollow but clear enough from Raven's chintzy speaker—says, "Locate Deb GPS."

Jim Davis's eyes remain centered in the screen, staring up my girl's skirt. He does not blink.

Next I engage Raven's autopilot, providing her the room-code for the parking garage—which she'll used to pull the precise geocode from the building database. She begins traipsing ahead for the elevators. Her livestream shows nothing but clear hallway now, the yellow shirts behind her.

Did they buy it?

Are they going to follow?

I'm not hearing footsteps.

Across the table, Paul's half-donut-bald head is sinking. I am confused—those Aeron chairs aren't malfunctioning again, are they?—before a ripple passes through the carpet and I peek under the table.

Paul is hiding. Lowering himself as quietly as possible, contacting his knees in succession, then butt cheeks, then arms with wrists joined gingerly. He finishes on his side, a felled bowling pin. Puffed cheeks tell me he's holding his breath.

I think I'll join him.