Heather gaped at her. It took her a moment to recover and shoot back, “No need to worry, I have a secondary firewall I can put in its place.”

She jabbed at her forearm keyboard. Then, as Heather restored her firewall, a tiny smile crossed Wyatt’s lips, and her fingers danced over her forearm keyboard again—and executed another program.

“Hey!” Heather cried, her palm flying up to her head, as though to shield her processor with her hand.

“Whoops, did something disable your secondary firewall, too?” Wyatt said innocently. “I don’t know how that keeps happening.” She pressed a finger to her lips like she had to think about it a moment. “Oh, wait, I do. It’s me. I’m doing it.”

Heather opened and closed her mouth, then sputtered, “Is there some convoluted little point you’re trying to make?”

Wyatt shrugged. “Just that I can’t help noticing I can disable most any defense you erect around your processor, and it’s incredibly easy for me. I mean, that took me mere seconds, both times, and you probably worked on those firewalls for months. Now that I think about it, if you don’t have a firewall protecting your neural processor, I could probably do anything to you. With that consideration in mind, you’d be wise to write a stronger program to defend yourself before trying to ‘make my life seriously suck.’ At least, if you’re still stupid enough to try it.”

“Are you threatening me?” Heather whispered.

“No,” Wyatt said flatly. “I’m stating the obvious.”

Heather hovered there, fists clenched, frustration on her face. Then she seemed to make a decision. She batted at Wyatt’s shoulder playfully. “Oh, come on, Enslow, you’re taking this way too seriously.”

It was Wyatt’s turn to stare.

“You know I was teasing you. It’s what CamCos do to Middles. Some friendly hazing. I know you were doing your job reporting me, and honestly, it was very dumb of me to get tricked by those reporters into running my mouth about the other CamCos in the first place. I still feel so foolish over it. Good for you, for catching it!”

Wyatt opened and closed her mouth, utterly perplexed.

“I have to go. You’re a rock star, girl!” Heather winked at her, then headed across the room and disappeared into the elevator.

Wyatt burst out, “What happened? I don’t understand! We were having a standoff, then she acted like I was the one who started threatening stuff, like I was the one overreacting.” She turned to Tom urgently, her brows furrowed. “I wasn’t making a big deal out of nothing, was I?”

“That was Heather saving face,” Tom explained. “You won, she lost, and she couldn’t admit it.”

“Really?”