Of course, they’re both caught. But this kid at some point will be getting out, will serve some time and then be free to stroll out, disappear, erase his identity online, and start over, correcting past mistakes, modifying the past’s little slipups so they don’t happen again. While Joey’s crimes—taking lives—mean no do-overs, no learning from your mistakes, no learning curve.

Will is lean. Taut skin and bone. Looks like he’d curl right up in a fight. But Joey recognizes this kind of kid immediately. He’s seen this kind of kid before. Able to ignore pain, seems literally not to feel it. Can somehow take any infliction the world brings him. Seems—in that impish, smug expression—almost amused by it. Seems to require no food or drink, seems to have no physical needs. Day and night don’t seem to matter. Body merely a vessel, pretty much ignorable. It’s scary. A superior kind of criminal, from a more advanced civilization or something.

“What about you?” Will asks him suddenly.

The neatness of it occurs to Joey. “You’re a cybercriminal?” says Joey. “I’m a cybervictim.” Thinking about his phone—the phone submerged in coffee—Joey only learned later how that kid Zack had gotten all its texts and photos into the Cloud before that.

“Hired assassin, they told me.” Will gestures to the guard station. “That’s all they said. Told me to rattle me, I guess. Putting me in here with a real criminal.” Will gives a thin smile.

And when Joey begins to describe what happened—telling about his “business” over the past year, telling about the photos—Will listens silently, intently, and at a certain point shakes his head.

“Joey, Joey, Joey…that’s all the evidence they got you on?” Will seems genuinely upset. Genuinely mournful. “You could have avoided this. You could have junked the evidence on your phone, made the evidence destroy itself, even in the Cloud. Joey, Joey”—still shaking his head—“there’s so much more you can do with an iPhone.”

And the look Will gives Joey—pity, plain and simple. But in that look, too, maybe a little sympathy, a little friendship.

Maybe the start of something, thinks Joey. The fact that they’re only temporary cellmates, maybe it’s even better for both of them. Maybe a reason for both of them to open up.

Tell me.

Show me.

23.

23.

“Red!” says the cute Latina GreenGirl barista with a big smile. “I remember you!” She’s clearly delighted to see him.

Zack smiles shyly.

“Last time I saw you, you were dunking your iPhone in coffee. On purpose, apparently.”

“You saw that?”

She smiles. “I was keeping an eye on you.” She continues making an order. “I’ve seen you since then, of course.”

Zack knows where this is going.

“On TV! On the news. A hero.” She smiles broadly again.

“Yeah, well…”