Zack sits in Steve’s only chair. Steve is on the bed, cross-legged. No gun anymore. His gun is in the bowels of the 14th Precinct, or already melted down.

“What’s up, pal?”

Zack pauses.

“You can tell me anything,” says Steve. “Your friend from age ten, right?”

“I don’t know…,” says Zack cautiously.

“Hey, I know I’ve been a little fragile these last few months,” Steve says with a smile. “But go ahead. Try me.”

Zack knows Steve won’t be smiling for long.

“Steve, I…I need you to tap into your engineering skills…”

“Shoot,” says Steve.

“You’re good with cell phones, right? Didn’t you even rebuild yours a couple years ago?”

“You remember,” says Steve with satisfaction. “Took it apart, replaced some of the software.” He grins, blissful, childlike. “I don’t ever pay a cell phone bill,” he says. “Like I said, happy to rig yours someday.”

Ever since their time at camp together, at ten years old, Steve had tinkered with electronics. He’d built intricate stuff, modified stuff, taken stuff apart and put it back together. Walkie-talkies, radios, musical components, model rockets, radio airplanes, even the earliest cell phones. Learning it all from the Internet.

Looking inside this cell phone? Zack honestly has no idea whether it’s something Steve can do. But Steve’s the only person Zack knows to ask.

“I need you to look at a phone that’s been tampered with.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone’s opened it up and done something to it, and I have no idea what.”

“Your phone?” Steve asks.

Zack shakes his head.

Steve waits for more explanation.

“Someone who needs our help,” says Zack. “Someone who has nowhere else to turn.”

“Okay, then,” says Steve, looking a little mystified by this oblique line of conversation from Zack. “Happy to try to help.”

“That’s nice, Steve. Really nice. You’re a good guy.”

Steve shrugs.

“I need to tell you whose phone it is.”

Steve frowns.

“It’s Joey Richter’s.”

Steve is silent. Seems to only partly comprehend.

Zack rushes into it. Hoping at least some of it sticks. At least some of it is clear. “He reached out to me.”

“Wait. And you, what, you…you met with him?”

Zack nods. “He texted me. That’s how desperate he is. He’s got nowhere else to go. His bosses are getting ready to kill him, Steve. I know you probably have no problem with that. And, well, more people may be at risk. His phone’s been altered to do something. And he doesn’t—and I don’t—have any idea what it is.”

Steve is silent.

“He doesn’t want to kill you. He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants, he needs, our help. And if we give it, if we help him, we can put our fear of him aside forever.”

Steve takes a deep breath and narrows his eyes.