“What are you doing here?” she said back, and she let him in, and he said, “I think I should text the others.”

“Why?”

“Aizel texted me this address before Marwan destroyed it.”

“He destroyed it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you even doing here?”

“I just—I want to know what it was. It, like, messed with my grandfather’s pacemaker, and he … died.

“Oh my god. I’m sorry.”

“Why did it send me here? What are you doing here? Did you get the same text?”

“No,” she said. “This is my father’s company, and Aizel bought data from him—our data—and also maybe told the government he’s been selling at least some data illegally? I haven’t figured it all out yet. But he left for Moscow this morning, like in a hurry. Like he’s in trouble.”

She went to the laptop and redid her Aizel search. “Look at this,” she said, and she clicked on the invoice she’d already looked at. “It’s dated the day before we all got messages from the device.”

“For real?” he said, looking over her shoulder. “What’s the other one?”

She went back and clicked the second invoice, which was almost identical, except for the date, which was yesterday. “The request for four more names came through last night.”

“So it’s starting over again,” he said. “There’s a new device, and it has four new people?”

She shrugged. “How would I know? This is all crazy.”

“I’ll text the others.” He got his phone out, and Ilanka decided to print the invoices to show them; then Eli said, “Can I get on the Wi-Fi here? I have a bad signal.”

Ilanka clicked on the Wi-Fi icon on the laptop to see what the name of the network was, and a drop-down menu appeared showing available nearby networks.

“Eli,” she said. “Look.”

There was a Wi-Fi network named Aizel in the drop-down.

He said, “So we’re getting close. Literally.”

“But close to what?” she said.

“To finding out what it even is and where it came from. But if it’s so close that its network is showing up here … I mean, why pay for the data when it could probably hack and have thousands of names?”

“It’s following the rules,” Ilanka said. “It’s obtaining the data legally.”

“We need to get the others.” He started texting. “We need to go to school.”

“And do what?” she asked.

“Intercept it.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Then don’t come.” He stopped texting and looked up. “I just think … I think it wants me to find it.”

Ilanka watched as he thumbed out his text and thought about telling him no thanks, to leave her out of it. But her father was involved. She didn’t have a choice but to see it through.

Finally he looked up from his phone. “You coming?”

Eden

EDEN