They spotted the car around the corner from the body shop and watched from across the street for a few minutes to make sure no one would catch them.

Marwan said, “Eden thinks this is a bad idea.”

Eli nodded. “It probably is.”

A half hour ago, Eli had been sitting looking at the river and thinking about going to visit his grandfather and not really wanting to when Marwan finally responded to Eli’s earlier text. Turns out the device had confirmed what Eli thought he knew—that Christos was involved with the egging.

When Marwan texted that he was planning some kind of retaliation, Eli had replied Want company? without properly thinking it through. Now here they were.

“I shouldn’t do it, should I?” Marwan had the dozen eggs and rubber gloves in a plastic grocery bag in his hand. He definitely didn’t sound like he wanted to go through with it.

Eli shrugged. “No, probably not.”

They’d talked about maybe leaving messages with the eggs they planned to crack on the car. Ones that said, “We know who you are” or “This IS our country,” but the eggs would make the point well enough.

“I feel like I should do something,” Marwan said.

“Yeah, I get that,” Eli said.

They stood there silently for a minute, and then Eli bent down and twisted the valve on the car’s passenger side front tire. Air hissed out.

“Excellent,” Marwan said.

He put the eggs down and checked his phone and then unzipped his bag and took the device out and put it back in again. He picked up the eggs again, and they started walking back the way they’d come.

“You’ll be okay with it tonight?” Eli asked.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Marwan said.

“You working?” Eli asked.

“Yeah. As long as it doesn’t pull a trick like it did in Panera, I should be fine.”

“What did it do in Panera?”

After Marwan explained, Eli said, “I don’t like Panera either,” and smiled.

“Oh, and Eden asked it to figure out from our phones if there’s something we all did in common that maybe explains why it’s us. She said it would take a while.”

“She? Eden?”

“No, she, the device. Whatever.” Marwan shook his head. “It was talking, using a woman’s voice.”

Eli said, “I read about the first-ever thing like Alexa or like this, if they’re similar. It was a program called ELIZA—which, by the way, has all the same letters as Aizel—and it could mimic conversation. People got all confessional with it, telling it secrets, like right out of the gate. Even though they knew it wasn’t real.”

“So weird,” Marwan said. “We need some kind of new lead, and hopefully that’ll come from figuring out why it picked us.”

Eli nodded. “Has it … said anything more? About me?”

Marwan shook his head. “No, sorry.”