“How did you get in there?” Joey asks, dumbfounded. “How did you get put in my cell like that?”

Will snickers. Like it’s child’s play. Nothing to it.

“And you can get out just as easily?” Joey still remembers how he had awakened one morning and Will was gone. Transferred out before the trial, Joey presumed, at the request and agreement of lawyers on both sides as well as the judge—standard security procedure before a trial begins, to eliminate the temptation to discuss trial proceedings and details, but now Joey starts to realize there was another power at work.

“It’s pretty easy to hack the state of New York’s jail and prison databases,” says Will, watching the device carefully as he talks and drives. “They’re pretty old tech, as you can imagine. Wasn’t the smartest IT team, just a bunch of state employees in Albany, who put the original programs together. Still waiting for funding to update them. If you’ve already been in the prison system, it’s easy to work yourself back into it. After all, no one’s tryin’ to do that.”

Will looks around him before turning down a narrow one-way street. “There’s literally thousands upon thousands of prisoners cycling into, out of, and around the state’s prison system all the time. I’m just another name in their fucked-up databases.”

Will suddenly possessing that fancy phone is no longer so impressive. Clearly there are guards and administrators on the take from Karloff, facilitating what Will just described. Crooked guards—what a surprise.

“Well, you’re not so smart,” says Joey. “’Cause with all this”—he gestures to the device on the dashboard, the nondescript sedan—“you’re still just another soldier like me. A soldier from the future, with cooler toys and scams, but just a soldier working for Karloff.”

Will is silent.

“It’s almost like you replaced me, isn’t it? You replaced me when I went inside.”

“There are lots of us,” says Will, emotionless.

“What does Karloff want with me?”

Will shrugs. “Guess we’ll both find out.”

They are headed, Joey knows, to Karloff’s headquarters. But he doesn’t know where it is. Because no one does.

Because it moves every day, he’s heard. Sometimes twice a day, he’s heard. Sometimes hourly.

He’s never met Karloff, of course. Almost no one has.

The assignments always come through intermediaries. The organization has always been run that way. For everyone’s protection.

You don’t want to meet with Karloff. Ever.

You want to go through life without ever meeting with Karloff. If you’re meeting him, there’s some problem. Something not going smoothly.

The legend has always been that the first time you see Karloff can be the last time you’ll see him.

Or your last time seeing anyone, for that matter.

Joey figures—assumes—that’s an exaggeration.