I’d told myself I wanted to check on them. This worked. I could remember how horrified the others had been at the prospect of my going over to her place for dinner, but this seemed important.

“Then yes, I’ll come over.”

“Tonight or tomorrow? Do you have a preference for what to eat?”

“Sure, and no preference for day or food. Just let me know, and double check that the message got through. I don’t want to miss this because of a missed message.”

“Will do,” she replied, with all the seriousness she would have shown if she were receiving a field order.

“I’ve got to say, it’s concerning, if people are reading this failure of infrastructure as sabotage.”

“For sure.”

Our guys showed up around the same time the vigilante’s backup did. We left them to their backup with a brief explanation, then walked in the direction of Sveta, Chris, and Byron. Because the box was heavy-ish and I only had the one hand, I took one handle and Kenzie took the other.

We explained in brief.

“Your dad didn’t give you a ride?” Byron asked.

“He’s busy with stuff. His work isn’t doing so great right now,” she said. “My mom wants to move but can’t find a good place to go. I’m not too bothered.”

“You brought a thing?” Chris asked.

Kenzie gave her box a pat. “We don’t have far to go. At first I thought we’d use the abandoned shopping center, but I think we’ll get better results at this place. It’s managed by a real estate company that’s rivals with my dad’s. We kind of have to break in.”

“Sweet,” Chris said.

“Not sweet,” Byron said. “Concerning.”

“Concerning on multiple fronts,” I agreed.

“Can you go with me on this?” she asked. “It’s a good location, not too much noise, I think, and I’m super-duper eighty, seventy, mayyybe sixty percent sure this is going to be totally worth it.”

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“Nothing! Nothing. Field test. It’s hard to get optimal conditions, targets, and stuff. I still need to fine tune.”

“She’s up to something,” Byron said.

“No! Yes! But not in a bad way!”

“Kenzie,” Sveta said. “What are you doing?”

“Please? I’ve worked so hard on this project, and the idea of this moment with the flashy reveal and everything has been keeping my mood up since one of my favorite people got sent to a cape gulag.”

“It’s a block of buildings in an isolated area, with heavy supervision, limited time outdoors, and explosive trans-dimensional ankle monitors,” I said. “It’s not that uncomfortable.”

“Has to have slave labor to be a gulag,” Chris said.

Kenzie tried her best puppy dog eyes.

“If we caved to this, what kind of precedent would we be setting?” Sveta asked.