I pause at the bathroom door, listening, my legs quivering, ready to run. The only sound is my heart tick-tocking in my ears. Don’t think. Just go. Sometimes it takes hurling yourself into the unknown to find your place. I should know. As far as most of society is concerned, I’ve been dead for a year.

And look at me now.

I inch into the hall, allowing the FR cameras to scan my face for the first time, and officially putting myself on the museum’s radar.

Willa may have been invited to this evening’s party, but my image won’t match with anyone on the guest list. The other people attending tonight’s charity event entered the building through the museum doors on Sandusky Street, submitting to a biometric eye scan that matched their DNA to the guest list before they were admitted to the festivities in the ground floor lobby. I didn’t have time to obtain AMPs—contact lenses that allow me to see augmented reality and could also disguise my eyes as Willa’s—so I made my own entrance, using a retractable grappling hook to climb up an outside wall to an opening in the garage near the freight entrance. After that I hid beneath my scrambrella to remain off the grid while I snuck into the museum’s basement restroom.

This is the moment of truth.

Half expecting an alarm to sound or for somebody to tackle me from behind, I walk down the hall past windows overlooking the (thankfully empty) worktables in the conservation labs with my back so rigid it aches. When I reach the elevator, I press the up button and wait. Tick tock, tick tock. My heart keeps time in my ears while my hands turn clammy inside my elbow-length gloves.

I know from the weeks I’ve spent cozying up to Tyson, my date for tonight, that the AI security system does its best to recognize and profile everyone in the museum, but it’s not perfect. The inconsistency reports are monitored by lowly humans. And that’s the downfall of the security at the Warhol I’m banking on.