“How’s it going, Bill?” she hollered. Bill Jorgensen—solidly built, with a full beard that had already gone white—could have had a thriving film and TV career as Santa Claus. Surprised to see her, he hiked up his jeans by the belt. “I thought maybe I could get him from above, but if I punch down through the ceiling, I’ll get debris all over him.”

“And the server!” she shouted.

“That, too!” he said, nodding.

“Jesus Christ,” Zanne said quietly, wondering for the millionth time how so many men got their stellar reputations when all she’d ever seen them be was average. “Come on down, Bill,” she said.

Zanne hopped off the ladder and went down the hall to where the IT workstations were set up. She followed the maze of gates strong enough to protect state secrets, grabbed the server cage keys from the safe, and doubled back in time to find Bill pleading with Alfie to “Settle down, bud.” Alfie would not. At the sight of Zanne, he shrieked his displeasure. She flinched—what was that sound? Part pig, part cricket, part laser to the meat of her brain.

She put the key in the padlock and paused. “Now, Bill,” she said, “when I open this cage, are we gonna have a problem?”

“Alfie’s my best baby! Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

“Okay. Get ready.”

Zanne turned the key in the padlock and opened the cage door. Alfie stopped vocalizing, watching with interest as Bill walked in to comfort him, arms outstretched as if reaching for his son.

“That’s right, bud. You’re such a good boy.”

Or was he? Alfie screeched, jumped on Bill’s head, punched him in the ear, and scrambled down his back and out of the cage. Zanne watched it happen, powerless to do anything but jump out of the way. Bill spun around like a confused tornado. Out in the hall, the landscapers let out a chorus of expletives. Bill tore after his monkey, down the corridor and out the front door, the men close at their heels, leaving behind a stench that reeked of smoke, something electric, and faintly of...urine? An archipelago of droplets lay on the tile floor and the main server began to hiss.

“Fuck me,” Zanne said. She pulled out her phone and dialed the IT manager.

“I’m twenty minutes out,” he said, a note of panic in his voice, as if he’d been caught out past curfew.

“The monkey pissed on the server. We need to switch over to the backup.”

“I...uh...” Zanne could hear his gears turning, trying to yoke those three disparate words—monkey, pissed, and server—into the kind of logic problem MIT had trained him to solve.

“Now, Greg! Talk me through it,” she said.