Eli was more confused than when he’d arrived. “So I thought everything was fine and she left and I went back inside but then her parents got a text a few minutes later from someone using Svetlana’s phone, saying she’d been in an accident a few minutes later, and they left for the hospital. So I guess it tried again when it didn’t work the first time? I just tried to get information from the hospital, but no one will talk to me because I’m not family, and her parents aren’t responding to my mom’s texts.”

Eli couldn’t seem to get his tongue or lips to move to make words. Even if he could, what would they be? Would the app read his face as scared? Intrigued? What?

“You need to get rid of it,” Ilanka said, wiping away tears that formed instantly, then said, “It used my voice.”

“What do you mean?”

“When it called 911, it sounded like me.” She pushed the bag on the table toward him.

Eli said, “I just want to think this through. I don’t want to rush to action.”

“You actually like this, don’t you?” Ilanka said, shaking her head. “How boring was your life that you are actually enjoying jumping through hoops for this thing that just came out of nowhere and just tried to kill my friend?” She stood. “I’m leaving.”

“But you’re supposed to keep it until noon tomorrow.”

“Not happening,” she said, and she walked out and woke the bells over the door again.

Eden

EDEN

Eden walked as quickly as she could and, when it was time to cross two ways to get to the coffee shop, did so carefully. At one corner she noted a flyer taped to a streetlamp post—a tip line for hate crimes in the neighborhood. She got her phone out, took a picture of it, pocketed her phone, and crossed again. Once inside the café, she spotted Eli and sat. There was a plastic bag on the table; presumably the device was in it.

He said, “She just left.”

“What happened?” She checked her phone, put it on the table, and turned the screen off. Her hand was generating tiny tremors.

Between receiving the texts and arriving here, she’d been hoping things had changed, or that there’d been a misunderstanding. But the story Eli told now—the device calling 911 before the accident had even happened?—was the same, and her low-tide nausea surged toward high.

She should have never told Mark.

“How bad is it, do you think?” she asked, and immediately felt the push of emotion behind her cheeks, like she might burst into tears if she didn’t fight hard enough. “Svetlana?”