We stare at each other ten endless seconds, underneath the table, lying stock-still on our sides. My left hip bone is made of pain. Paul and I lock eyes. Refreshingly, he is managing to ignore my feet. Our ears prick at slight noises—a hard disk spinning down, air through an overhead duct.

Finally, a footstep outside. Then another. I brace for Elite to burst in, for some thug's arm to jerk me to my feet ... but the door remains shut.

I roll painstakingly to my knees and peer over the tabletop to the monitor, which shows Raven's livestream.

"They went!"

The yellow shirts are boarding the elevator with the drone, wedging themselves into corners. "It worked. They're following her down to the garage."

Paul picks himself up off the carpet to confirm. "It's only four floors."

"I know, not much time. Okay—so assuming Carter Kotanchek is the mastermind, what're we looking at? What is he capable of?"

"Hard to say."

"Criminal stuff? You were at Carnegie with him; did he have a record?"

"None that I'm aware of."

"Hazing? Some date rape-ish thing?"

Paul shakes his head. "The key is to think big. In the grandest imaginable terms. When he pitched Susan and I on the Cray supercomputer, he predicted we'd solve global warming. He thought we could box the problem algorithmically and then use the thing to blast scenarios till we had it licked."

"And you bought that? He just wanted a shiny toy."

"No." Paul pushes his lip forward. "He had a vision. He believed in that vision. When it didn't pan out, he dreamed up another—he thought it would be great for reality TV. 'Geek Versus Machine.' He actually found some producer-type to shoot a pilot. It almost worked. The network backed out last second, but for a few weeks there it looked like they'd buy the thing out from under us."

"Instead it's collecting dust up on 12 now."

"Right. $16 million worth."

On the livestream, Raven leads the yellow shirts off the elevator. She floats along, hugging the parking-garage ceiling. By default she will fly to the geometric center of the room and wait. I decide that might seem suspicious, like she's stumped or otherwise malfunctioning, and so dash off a RANDOM_CRUISE 15 command. This will keep her wandering in a fifteen-foot radius of that point.

Paul adds, "I don't believe Susan would have sided with him about the Cray under different circumstances. She and Carter were ... well, closer then."

A tiny sulk nudges out of his words. It is insane that he's making the allusion now, of all times. Huge triangle dynamics exist between the Codewise founders; Jared dished some of it to me when I started, before my aversion to workplace skeeze made us enemies. Does it nauseate me that Carter and Susan briefly dated, in the lean days before she was a tech mogul/trailblazer? Yes. Still, imagining Paul as some jealous third wheel—brooding, huffing around the office kneading his doughy hands—is nearly as gag-inducing. I'll pass.

"Let's forget the Cray, that's ancient history," I say. "So if Blackquest 40 is Carter's baby, it goes back to money. Just how brutal are the numbers? He told me something about 'swimming upstream,' said we were getting squeezed on price?"

"My understanding was things had improved." Paul raises a shoulder, befuddled. "The April layoff was painful but suddenly in June, Carter had budget space to hire all that new sales staff."

"Yeah, I remember June—they started taking out the trash again." Janitorial had temporarily gone to an every-other-week pickup schedule, which did not mesh well with my Greek yogurt obsession. "Something changed in the middle. In May. What?"

Paul has no idea.

"And why didn't it last?" I go on. "Why does he suddenly need Blackquest 40 and FPP-1 or whatever else this entails, if things were better?"

We brainstorm. Talking fast, thinking fast, an eye on the livestream. How might Codewise profit from this scheme? Can Carter's claim that FPP-1 is essential to compete over the long haul be taken at face value? What counterbalancing benefits to Blackquest 40's surely-exorbitant cost could there be? Neither Paul nor I really dig balance sheets, but we bumble along doing our best.

"I wonder if it isn't some backdoor equity play," Paul says. "Maybe Carter negotiated us taking an ownership stake in Elite. He's always wanted to diversify. It helps explain the options penalty—if we're all under the same fiduciary tent, transferring options from us to them would be easier."

"In that scenario, Codewise gets into the corporate training biz?"

"Right. Perhaps Carter covets the military contacts too."

"And these brutes start coming to company barbecues? We're standing around playing cornhole with Jim Davis?"

Paul shrugs.

None of this is getting us any closer to the truth. My thoughts feel gunked up. This money talk has dragged a slime across my brain—I'd rather be exploring Carter's (probable) betrayal of Susan, or how Blackquest will help Elite subjugate the masses.

I bite my lip and growl and check Raven's livestream. I don't see yellow shirts. What happened to the yellow shirts? I pan around, using the joystick controls to swivel Raven's camera.

On the third sweep, I spot Elite. Jim Davis has led them away, closer to the alley exit, where the van crashed. He and three goons face the smoking wreckage. Their fifth member, Graham, stands palming one elbow, fingering his thermal undershirt. He twists to peek back at Raven's camera.

He cannot be smirking.

What are they saying? Are they saying anything? No one is rushing into the van or banging the windows for Mikhail, or whipping out his phone to dial 911—which seems to confirm what I thought earlier, that they already discovered this.

Did they discover the dumpster too?

I tap out instructions for Raven to creep closer, hoping her mic can pick up a snatch of their conversation. She has just started moving when Davis whirls and leads his team directly at her.

He is angry. Maybe he's wise to my deception. The chunky glasses sit on his nose at a crazy skew he doesn't bother correcting. Forget about that stressball of his—Davis is going to take a running jump and rip Raven down by a rotor blade and start slamming her into a concrete pillar.

There's no time for evasive maneuvers. My jaw goes weak thinking about my pal of several years and dozens of loving makeovers. I recall the early days, feathering pink highlights onto her case, even though I hate pink, because I was sick of people calling it "he." The first time she ran off 100% solar. I brace for her plastic-and-silicone guts to be spewed across the parking garage.

But Jim Davis keeps going. He zips by underneath, vanishing from the livestream. The rest of the yellow shirts, Graham pulling up the rear, do likewise. I rotate Raven's camera to track them.

They are shrinking. Soon they've reached the elevators.

I take the keyboard urgently. "If equity is coming back to Codewise, there must be a record. You have top-level access to the financials, right?"

This conference-room PC has a cluttered Start menu. Annoyed, I squint through icons for the accounting database. I've just found it and am clicking through login dialogs when Paul responds.

"No," he says. "Not top-level. Only Carter and Susan."

I growl more and spin the mouse around, a full 360 on its pad. Argh. The more I consider it, the more convinced I am we need to see that balance sheet. To dive into those cash flows, see whether Codewise invoiced anything from Russia or Bulgaria—when, how much, who authorized the transfers.

I think I need to be on the loose a little longer.

"Hey, what if I could get onto Carter's machine?"

Paul stares at me like my yellow spikes just turned purple. "Up on the executive wing? Tenth floor?"

"Yeah. I just saw him down here, I'll bet he never logs out. All I need is to slip into his office. My badge won't work on e-wing but yours would."

Both my boss's hands clap over his badge as though I am mugging him. "Every badge-in is tracked. Elite would know immediately what was going on."

"No they wouldn't. If anybody's checking the badge log—which they totally are not—all they'll think is you're upstairs looking for Carter. Or putting a paper on Susan's chair, or finding her OP, whatever."

His hands stay on his badge. The lanyard, stretched taut, divides his palm into two pink patties.

"Let's step back," he says. "I—I think we should go through the proper channels. After all Carter is the CFO; breaking into—"

"Screw proper channels! Don't go soft on me now. Carter sold us out, man—he forfeited his rights."

Paul's lips fold into his mouth. My pulse is running. Our shared gaze moves to the livestream. Down in the parking garage, the elevator car has arrived. The doors split. Yellow shirts step on. Jim Davis thrusts his index finger at a button. Behind him, Graham flops his head back hinge-like, in what I read as a pose of submission. The doors close.

Suddenly I know what to say. "Look if this is illegal—guns, the white collar piece, any of it—then we're on the hook too. You especially. You're an exec."

"How?" Paul says. "I've done nothing but my job."

"Right." I drum my fingers pertly on the tabletop. "How'd that work out for Bernie Madoff's people? Or Enron?"

The threat of legal jeopardy has the desired effect. Paul's eyes pinch to dots, then swell, then pinch again. He cocks his head as though preparing to object, but thinks better. His whole torso lifts in a trembling inhalation. Is he about to sneeze?

He releases the badge, unclips it from the lanyard.

"Please, Deb."

I accept the badge across the table, waiting for more. He is either unwilling or incapable of elaborating.

"Of course, absolutely," I say, off to the hall.

I sprint for the staircase, which is two corners away. Pivoting at the first, I glance back and see Paul emerging from the small conference room. I guess he'll just ... go back to his office? What will he say if Jim Davis comes to question/interrogate him? Maybe he can keep Elite busy for a while, buy me a few extra minutes.

I salute, two fingers off the forehead. Paul nods. He looks green.

He never would've given me his badge if he had known the fate of Mikhail, the full extent of the garage incident. I feel bad deceiving him. He's been a prince—if I was at my desk, I would flip Polarity of the Universe from Evil back to Amoral. Still, Paul will thank me after I turn up proof Carter's in bed with these oligarchs—proof we can show Susan and shut this whole nightmare down.

Won't he?