The Whiz doesn’t even glance at me. He twists his head left, right, and behind him, monitoring every window with those huge eyes of his. His slight fingers twitch, like he’s trying to write code to fix his current situation. Or his fingers are itching for the door handle, but I have Duke on lockdown.

His only way out is to give us information.

“The capo . . . she’ll have sent out her sicarios by now!” the Whiz whisper screams for the twentieth time tonight. “The governor . . . his drones!”

“So you’ve said—”

“They’re coming! They’ll find me!”

“Tell us something we don’t already know!” Blaise snips. “Like the location of the govdamn hard drive!”

Blaise is trying to make govdamn a thing. So far, his clever expletive has only caught on with himself.

“Arriving at destination,” Duke’s gruff voice informs us.

I whip my chair around as the beams of Duke’s headlights hit Enchanted Rock’s welcome sign, and let me tell you, the thing’s seen brighter days. The wood is so rotted and sprayed with graffiti that the only legible word is “wild.” Well, that’s what tends to happen when a state’s government abandons wholesale the parks and wildlife department.

Maybe that’s for the best. Humankind did a pretty lousy job as stewards of the earth. Time to let nature take back control.

“Warning, rough road ahead,” Duke gives us an unhappy heads-up.

More like the pavement just stops existing at all. The road continues for about fifty more yards before it’s utterly swallowed up by a woodland of mesquite trees.

Awesome. As if hiking four miles up and down a granite dome in the dead of night searching for a needle in a haystack wasn’t hard enough, we now have the added challenge of accomplishing the feat with no clear path.

Can’t be mad at the kid. He did well. Anyone undertaking the scavenger hunt of finding out what’s on Roth’s servers has to really want it.

Good thing I do.

“Well, guys, looks like we’re continuing this field trip on foot,” I say, taking the wheel to park Duke out of sight behind an old restroom facility with a caved-in roof.

The Whiz starts breathing at high speed—short wheezing pants that sound like he’s on the brink of a hyperventilation meltdown.

Not ideal.

I counter with slow, exaggerated breaths, aiming to subliminally calm the Whiz, and I really think it’s starting to work when Blaise ruins it all by butting in with his boogeyman face, growling burning threats.

“Listen, genius boy, the sooner you show us the location, the sooner we can all get out of here. If you keep up this helpless act, we’re going to find the hard drive on our own and leave your ass on top of the govdamn rock.”

The kid stops breathing outright. Whether it’s out of fear, protest, or acceptance is unclear. But he finally says something worthwhile.

“I was never supposed to come back here.”

Blaise flings himself back in his passenger seat, flicking off his safety belt. I throw him a mental high five, betting my smile outstretches his ear-to-ear fire-toothed grin.

We finally cracked him.

The Whiz just confirmed he’s been to this place before.

“Well you are here, so why don’t you do something about it?” Blaise dares the preteen. “You dubbed yourself the Whiz. Now earn that alpha title and finish the job you set out to do.” He straps a headlamp over his forehead, shuts off Lockdown Mode, and pops open Duke’s door. “Hackers are foot soldiers now. Let’s go end this war.”

Well, I feel inspired by Blaise’s talk. Revved-up, even. Capitalizing on the energy, I dig into my pack and smack a creased map onto the Whiz’s lap, a paper printout of the old park.

“For the last time, will you point to where you buried the treasure?”

The hard drive. The answers.

“Please,” I add for good measure.

The kid responds by adopting a thousand-yard stare, and then proceeds to rip the map into confetti.

Deep breaths, I coach myself, muting my blue-ribbon curses.

“You’re in control here, bud,” I tell him, flipping my black cap backward and slapping a headlamp on. “It’s up to you how long we’re out here.”

“I am the controlled,” the Whiz whispers. “Always.”

His words poke at the Code Cog that’s still squirreled away somewhere inside me. My whole life, before I joined up with Rayla, I was the controlled too. The programmed. And considering who this kid worked for, I bet he had it a thousand times worse than a Kismet Programmer. He must’ve been invisible chattel to people like the ex-governor and the capo.

I’ve had zero scruples dragging a twelve-year-old into a hotbed of danger. My blinders have been up: Do whatever it takes; we’re at war. But suddenly my conscience wants to come out.

Not a good time! I tell my moral compass.

Blaise looms over the Whiz’s chair and grabs the kid’s hand, pulling him out of the car and into the pitch-black night.

“You’re in control,” I maintain. Whether to the Whiz or to myself is up in the air.

A quarter of a mile into our hike, the tree line ends, and our steep climb begins.

While I can’t see much of the 425-foot pink granite dome rising out of the land in front of me in the dark, I can feel its massive presence. It’s unnerving.

Before I left Dallas, I did some digging on this place and read that the local indigenous tribes believed the rock was haunted by spirits and regularly saw ghost fires flicker at the top of the dome. Thus, the name Enchanted Rock.

I’m hoping those legends were spun to keep away enemy tribes and settlers, because I’m in no mood to deal with supernatural energy right now. I’ve got enough on my hands. Literally. The Whiz’s sweaty paw is interlocked with my left, while my right grips my gun in case we run into mortal foes like the cartel or the Guard.

Not taking any chances, Blaise has the boy’s other hand locked inside his. Humane zip-ties. I won the brief heated argument with Blaise for human cuffs instead of the real plastic ones. He’s our informant, not our prisoner.

I know what it’s like to be cuffed, and the last thing it inspires is collaboration.

“Okay, kid,” Blaise says, totally winded. The famed coder’s natural element is not the great outdoors. “At least tell us if what we’re looking for is on the summit. If I slog up that thing and you’ve really hidden the treasure at the base of this humungous rock, you won’t have to worry about any sicarios slicing you open, because I will.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” I assure the kid.

“Do you hear that?” the Whiz says in terror, aiming his big eyes at the dark sky above us. “Drones! We have to hide, now!”

“Nice try, kid,” Blaise says, unconvinced. “You’re going to have to do better than that to dupe the likes of us, genius boy.”

“Stop calling me a boy!” the Whiz spits.

“Well, you’re certainly no man yet,” I begin my retort—hell, I’m not sure if I’ve even crossed that threshold myself—but then get cut off with a sudden sharp stab to my left shin. Then another.

“What the—?!”

“You little ankle biter!” Blaise exclaims, voice turned murderous. He must’ve gotten pricked too.