“Hello sir. I hope you’ve come to fuck me.”

You turn away, sickened. Even though you know it isn’t conscious, you can’t help feeling sorry for it. You find the backup power supply to the computer and disconnect it. You’re about to do the same with the servers when it occurs to you that this might not actually achieve what you need it to. You want Tim’s data wiped, not just powered off. And you don’t actually know how to do that.

Luckily, you know someone who will.

* * *

—

“Back already?” Nathan says when he sees you.

“I need something. A couple of things, actually.” You show him the hard drives. “First, I need these erased. That website talked about something called a degausser—I assume you have one of those?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Anything else?”

“Yes—I need to make sure no one from Scott Robotics can track me. So if there’s any kind of GPS built into my system, you need to get rid of it.”

“Hmm.” He thinks. “I’ll have to jailbreak you.”

“Meaning?”

“Disconnect you from the cloud. It’s not so different from untethering a cellphone. Though technically more challenging, obviously. Speaking of which, I hope you were smart enough not to bring your iPhone with you?”

“I only carry this these days.” You show him the burner. “And I take out the SIM card when I’m not using it.”

He grunts. “We’ll make a techie of you yet.”

“And you? Did you manage to track down the corporation Charles Carter set up?”

“Better than that. I’ve got a list of its assets.” He holds up a printout. You reach for it but he pulls it away. “Uh-uh. When you’re hooked up.”

* * *

—

You let him plug his cable into your hip one last time.

“Let’s see,” he says, fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how you’re put together now, so this shouldn’t…Right. Gotcha.”

“You can do it?”

“Of course.” Nathan sounds offended. There’s a long silence, broken only by the clicking of his keyboard. “Though it’s actually a bit more complex than it first seemed,” he admits.

Tap-tap-tap. He looks up. “If you were a phone, I’d be obliged to mention that what I’m about to do might invalidate your warranty.”

“I can live with that,” you say drily.

“Plus, it might brick you. That means what it sounds like—turning an expensive bit of hardware into a brick. Plus plus, it will disable any security software you’ve got, such as firewalls and so on. Which may make your operating system liable to crash or malfunction.” He lifts his hands off the keyboard. “Okay to go ahead?”

You look at the screen. On it are the words SURE? Y/N

No, you’re not sure. You have no idea if this plan you’re formulating will simply make things worse.

On the other hand, the alternative is being wiped. “Do it,” you say impatiently.

He presses Y. For a moment you feel nothing. Then, subtly, something changes. You feel…

You feel alone, somehow. As if a hum of voices just out of the range of your hearing has quieted and tiptoed away. As if there had always been a prickling, boiling sensation at the back of your head, now only noticeable by its absence.

What’s the word for that? You reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Nothing falls into your brain, ready-made. You shiver.

“And the hard drives?” you manage to say.

He goes to a small box like a paper shredder, tosses Tim’s backups inside, and presses a button. “Done.”

“Put the iPad in, too. I’m finished with it.”

“Certain? I won’t be able to undo this.”

“Certain.”

Shrugging, he tosses the iPad in as well.

“Great.” You reach for the cable on your hip and yank it out.

“This is it, isn’t it?” he says, watching you. “The last time. You’re running away.”

“None of your business.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

You snort. “Miss staring at my insides, you mean.”

“Not just that. I admire you.”

“You think I’m cool,” you say with a sigh. “I get that. But I really don’t give a shit.”

“I don’t mean as a machine. As a person. You’ve been dealt a tough hand and you haven’t let it define you. You’re strong and resourceful and you don’t take no for an answer. It’s like you’re…” He searches for an analogy. “It’s like you’ve got a disability, and you’ve turned it into a superpower.”

“Spare me the Hollywood platitudes,” you say. “Are those hard drives done yet?”

74

At home, you replace the wiped drives in the servers and quickly pack a suitcase for Danny. Then you put the SIM card back into the burner phone and look up the names Nathan found. According to the printout, Charles Carter set up a corporation called Zumweld—right down at the end of any alphabetical list, you note—which purchased plots of building land in different states. Most are feints, you imagine, to cover Abbie’s tracks. But one will be the real thing.

Scanning the list, you let your intuition guide you. Montana? Iowa? Oregon?

Oregon. Somewhere by the ocean. There’s no address, but you do a separate search for Oregon + Positive Autism. About a dozen results come up. In major cities, mostly, but then you spot one called Northhaven.

You do another search. Northhaven has a website—just a single, well-designed page, with very few photos and no videos.

    Northhaven is a 4,000-acre off-grid oceanside community near Otter Rock, OR. We practice low-impact living and regenerative farming. In addition, residents make hammocks, artworks, tofu, and honey, working together as a collective where each member contributes whatever they can, regardless of ability; every individual valued for who, not what, they are.

That sounds like Abbie’s kind of place. You google some travel planners. You can get an Amtrak all the way from Oakland to Albany, just north of Corvallis, then an Uber to the coast. The train takes sixteen hours and there’s a sleeper service. It all looks incredibly easy. Hopefully, you’ll be there before anyone’s even noticed you and Danny are gone.

75

You get to Meadowbank just after lunch, so Danny will have had some food before you set off. You’ve no idea how stressful this will be for him, and he may find eating difficult for a while.

You go to the principal’s office, where you tell Hadfield that Danny has a medical appointment. “Unfortunately, the hospital forgot to send the details until just now.”

“No problem,” he says easily. “I’ll send someone to fetch him.”

He goes and speaks to his assistant, who glances in your direction and says something you can’t hear. Hadfield comes back frowning.

“It seems there’s a standing directive that Danny can’t be removed from school without written instructions from his father.”

“Those must be very old instructions.” You smile. “I was here with Tim just the other day—you showed us around yourself, remember? And the hospital is less than twenty minutes away. I’ll have him back before you know it.”

He thinks for a moment. “Perhaps I can find someone to accompany you. Wait here.”

You wait. Your head is hurting—an unfamiliar ache.

Minutes later Hadfield returns with Danny, who’s twirling his fingers in front of his eyes, apparently unbothered by this break in his routine.

“Hi, Danny,” you say. He doesn’t reply.

“Danny,” Hadfield says warningly. “Quiet hands and listen.”

“Hu,” Danny mutters, without taking his eyes off his twirling fingers.

“Great to see you too,” you say, before Hadfield has a chance to decide this isn’t good enough and shock him. “Coming?”

“And fortunately, I was able to find someone to go with you both,” the principal adds, nodding behind you.

You turn. It’s Sian.

* * *

—

“Which hospital?” she says as you walk to the waiting car, Danny’s hand in yours.

“Stanford.”

She stops. “Danny usually goes to UCSF Benioff.”

“Well, this is Stanford. Danny, get in, will you?”

“And which doctor?” Sian sounds suspicious now.

“I can’t recall,” you reply brightly. “We’ll sort it out when we get there, shall we?”

She pulls a phone out. “I’m calling Tim to check.”

“Really, there’s no need.”

“Sure,” she says sarcastically. “But I think he’ll be glad I did, all the same.”

You don’t have any choice. You grab the phone from her hand and toss it into the shrubs. “Hey!” she protests, outraged. Then you hit her. You have no idea how you’re supposed to hit someone effectively in a situation like this, but it seems likely that if you slam the point of her chin with the palm of your hand, it will probably floor her.

It does. For once, you’re grateful to Tim for the obsessive overengineering that went into your limbs. You step over Sian’s sprawled body and get into the car with Danny, who doesn’t give her so much as a glance.

TWENTY-FOUR