Tilly scowled at him, disgusted at how much power he had amassed simply from claiming he had power. In a single day, he’d rewritten their job description a dozen times. They’d gone from cybercrime investigators to bounty hunters. And the bounty wasn’t even necessarily tangible; it was prestige, privilege, glory. Meager reward for a child’s life, Tilly felt. Still, she found herself stepping into the heat of the night, armed and even exhilarated. The case really was coming to a close, she realized.

The lobby of Google Atlanta was more austere than Tilly expected. It looked, quite simply, like a lobby: chairs, a desk, home improvement magazines, company insignia, a sleek coffee machine, a water cooler. She had anticipated Android tablets dangling from the ceilings, perpetually burning effigies of Steve Jobs, Roombas slavishly cleaning the floors, a self-driving car practicing three-point turns. Instead she found white walls accented with splashes of green, red, blue, and yellow. “Corporations gonna corporate,” she imagined the old Rick saying, if she, the old Tilly, had confessed her surprise. Instead, she said nothing and followed him as he stalked toward the stairs, providing cover as they walked through the open atrium of the ground floor.

A sleek card reader hugged the doorway to the stairs, but made no fuss as Rick twisted the handle and nudged the door forward. Tilly knew from her days as a security auditor that automated access points were notoriously unreliable, but she told herself that these kids were responsible for the easy entry. She needed to be prepared for whatever happened next.

“We’re gonna have to split up,” Rick announced, holstering his gun.

“Why?” Tilly asked, gun still in hand, gripped.

“Google agreed to evacuate but they wouldn’t confirm or deny that they have a supercomputer on the premises. It could be in the basement, could be in a lab, could be that gorgeous coffee machine in the lobby. They wouldn’t budge.”

“Fucking techholes.”

“Honestly, I can’t even blame them,” Rick said as he ascended the stairs. “We’re the FBI. You don’t want us to know your secrets.”

Tilly shrugged and headed downstairs. It took her three full flights to reach an exit, but there was only one floor awaiting her. Cautiously, she stepped through a door and into a narrow hallway with a towering ceiling. It felt as if she were in a silo for a giant paper plane.

Motion-sensing lights incrementally illuminated the corridor, a new pair of bulbs bolting awake each time Tilly stepped forward. The wall on her right was made entirely of thick, translucent glass, but no doors were in sight. Tilly gripped her gun tighter.