“‘Get to it already.’” They were through HR, past reception.

“What?”

“‘What are you waiting for?’” She was nearly stomping down the hall. Past R & D. Past Marketing.

“Hailey?”

“The notes. ‘Get to it already, what are you waiting for? If you don’t act, we will. Did you think this was a joke? Why aren’t you doing more?’”

Linus was gaping at her, appalled. “That’s what they wrote you?”

“Yes, it’s just nag-nag-nag with those people.”

“Those people?”

“At first, I assumed it was about work. I have, as you’ve noticed, a terrible attendance record. But why be sneaky about it? This is the easiest company to work for in the history of business. No one needs to be sneaky about anything, and we all know it. And then you showed up. And then accidents started happening that required immediate action. My immediate action.”

“The school bus,” Linus remembered.

“Children. They endangered children. Because they didn’t think I was performing up to par.”

“Who?”

“Oh, who else? Who would be passive as well as aggressive? Who would hide behind documents, behind words, while challenging people to act, even as they don’t act? Come on, Linus. It’s obvious.”

“No way.”

“Yes.” Past the break rooms, the conference rooms.

“Even for them . . . I mean, I know they’re awful, every company in the world knows they’re awful, that they’re a necessary evil, but this is evil evil.”

“Yes!” She stopped. They were there. “The ones whose job it is to spy on their colleagues and then inform on them. The Brownshirts of every company in the world. Who have most of the power while we pretend they don’t, and they pretend they’re not dangerous.” She glared up at the sign. “The IT department.”

Linus looked up. “Abandon All Hope and Get Pwned” was over the bloodred double doors in dark cursive font a foot high. “If I hadn’t abandoned hope already, I would now.”

“Maybe you should—”

“No way.”

“As you like.” Hailey kicked the sinister red doors open and marched into the Information Technology department, their dire motto directly over her head for a second.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The room, kept cool and gloomy, seemed to swallow them. But when Hailey came through the doors, she brought enough light in to scatter at least three IT drones, who scurried out of sight, squeaking and squealing.

“So at last, you’ve come.” Edward Smegger turned slowly in his large black office chair, the back so flared it looked like a throne on wheels.

He was dressed in an alarming uniform of red jeans, white lab coat, and loafers in traffic-cone orange, but no shirt or socks. His shoulder-length gray hair (premature . . . Edward was thirty-one) looked more scraggly and mad scientist-ish than usual. He was so thin the bones of his wrists looked like they could be used as bladed weapons. “I wondered when you’d be here, you pathetic drone.”

“She’s not pathetic,” Linus warned.

“Thank you, Linus,” she replied. “Now then: we’ve had this talk before, Edward. This is not appropriate workplace attire. And you’re supposed to display your employee badge above the waist at all times.”

“The clip hurts my nipple,” he complained.

“At least this isn’t jarring or weird,” Linus muttered.

“And out there? In your world you think is so safe and so sane?” He stroked the small white object in his arms. “Your apathy, your refusal of your gifts . . . is that appropriate for the workplace?”

Distracted by what the man was holding, Linus raised his hand, as if waiting to be called on, and when Edward nodded, asked, “Are you petting a fake cat?”

“I’m allergic,” he explained primly, stroking the glassy-eyed stuffed animal. “But l’il Éowyn of Rohan understands me. She’s the one who told me what to do. She is my constant companion, my one and only true friend. And she is here with me now . . . at the scene of my ultimate triumph.”

As God is my witness, Linus thought, entranced, I can’t think of a thing to say.

“Moo-ha-ha-ha!” The laughter, which startled the hell out of them, got deeper and villainy-er. “Moo-ha-haaaaa! I—ack! Graaa-uk! Uk! Uk-uk!” Edward coughed, then rubbed l’il Éowyn on his throat like a poultice. “Sorry. I’ve been holding that in—”

“Your entire life, I think,” Linus finished, triply freaked out.

“Yes, possibly,” he admitted. “No need to hold anything in any longer. Not now. Now that we’ve succeeded. Now that we’ve moved you to act. L’il Éowyn counseled patience, and in the end, it was rewarded. All this . . .” He gestured to the gloom-shrouded computers, the chilly atmosphere, the minions lurking out of sight, watching and waiting to see who won. “She told me how to fool you.”

“Fool her?” Linus yelped. “It took Hailey about ten seconds to figure out you were the bad guy. After she realized I wasn’t the bad guy. And also after . . .” Making out for a while, he’d been about to add, then decided against it. “And Hailey was right . . . it’s obvious. Of course the bad guy’s in the IT department! You spy on what we’re doing on our computers—”

“You’re not supposed to surf Rotten Tomatoes or ESPN or update your Facebook on company time,” Edward whined.

“—so you can rat us out like, I dunno, Nazi Germany or whatever—”

“The Nazis were into animal conservation, and they were anti-tobacco. And they came up with the Volkswagen.”

Momentarily thrown (Really? The Volkswagen?), Linus plunged ahead. “And when you’re not spying, you’re sneaking around and sitting in judgment because we keep crashing the network but we don’t know why, and no matter what sort of help we need, you pretty much stamp No on everything, and of course you see everything, you know everything. You control the information!”

Hailey was staring at him.

“Wow,” he said, surprised. “I guess I’ve got some repressed anger at the IT guys.”

“Think so?”

“Edward, I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve all that vitriol. Probably. God, the stress of—”

“God is dead! Only the IT department can help you now.”

“It’s just that sort of attitude that gets you in trouble with HR,” she warned. “As I said during your last disciplinary action, telling employees God is dead and that your department is all the God they need in their cringing pathetic lives is not appropriate workplace behavior. We’ve got a really easygoing CEO, but even she thinks telling people you’re the only God they need is uncool.”

“You are living a lie!” L’il Éowyn went flying as Edward abruptly stood. “Hiding behind your paper identity, when you owe the world your gifts!”

“The only thing I owe the world are taxes and, possibly, children. And then, of course, more taxes.” She turned to Linus. “My mother always said we should replace ourselves, kid-wise, and move on. So I think we—”

“Okay, whatever you want, please don’t take your eyes off the villain,” Linus begged. “He is freaking me out.” Linus had never before sensed such overwhelming evil from a single person. Sure, everybody knew the IT guys were creepy, asocial weirdos who spent far too much time staring into screens of any sort. And, yeah, you didn’t ever want to meet one in a dark alley. Or cross one. Or engage with one in any social setting, ever. But Edward’s sheer malevolence was more than unsettling. He was a generally scary—

“I have made you great, It Girl!”

—nut job.

“And in return I and all my brethren are treated with thinly veiled contempt!”

“Then I apologize,” Hailey said in a tone that was frightening in its pleasantness. “I had no intention of veiling my contempt at all.”

“You shut us off from society, cast us off from the world! We’re cut off from the rest of the world not just physically but psychologically! We have nothing to do but fester and—”

“Go insane?” Linus guessed.

“Well, yes. Like mushrooms,” he admitted. “Evil mushrooms who can run a network from anywhere on the planet.”

“Oh, please. You guys get off on being different. You take pride in it. We don’t cut you off; you guys do it all on your own. You isolate yourselves; it’s your nature. And don’t get me started on your idiotic Help Desk Muppets!”

Edward gasped so hard Linus wondered if the man was having a heart attack. He shook a trembling finger in Hailey’s direction. “Judas!”

“Actually, Judas means praised and admired. So, yeah. Hailey’s definitely a Judas.”

Hailey was rubbing her forehead. “Please stop sticking up for me now. Edward, you and any other hacktivists you’ve hidden back there will cease and desist looking for bad situations and making them worse so I, or the National Guard, eventually have to intervene. Then—”

“What’s a hacktivist?” Linus asked.

“A trendy term for cowardly sneaky trespasser.”

Edward was rubbing his forehead in a gesture identical to Hailey’s. “Yes, that’s . . . that’s one I can’t defend. There can be no denying it’s sneaky of us,” he admitted.

“Edward, here’s how it is. I’m going to continue living my life, and if I’m running around doing the job of a cop or a firefighter or just working on annual reviews, it’s my own business and none of yours. And you? You’re going to jail.

“I don’t know what you did to the school bus, and how many other ‘accidents’ you’ve been responsible for to encourage me to step up, but you can be sure you won’t be doing anything like that ever again. You will turn yourself in. You will confess. You will not take a plea bargain. You will go to jail for quite some time. You will behave; you will forget you ever dreamed the dreams of super villains.”