“My point is, we’re all really strong. Sometimes there’s a situation where we stop being nice about it and just do our best.”

I saw the almost-smile become more of a smile. Because her means of self expression was different, with a smile meaning something totally different, I had to parse eyebrows, eyes, mouth and body language individually and then piece it together to read her.

Worry, guilt?

“What did you do?” I asked.

She froze.

“Smooth Kenz,” Chris murmured.

“Fuck off if you’re not going to help,” she said, under her breath. “I figured we needed all the info we could get.”

“You didn’t take Dragon’s files, did you?” Tristan asked.

“No! No. Nothing like that,” Kenzie said.

I imagined everyone in the room breathed a faint sigh of relief at that. Even Chris probably would’ve, and she’d apparently included him in her plan, confiding in him.

Taking Dragon’s files would’ve been a potential shitstorm of epic scale.

“I took over the prison security system, so we can use their surveillance,” Kenzie said. “And Chris and I kind of worked together to get cameras inside.”

She hit a key. The feeds along the wall switched to footage from the cameras spaced across the prison. A few of the scenes flicked between multiple perspectives across the building.

I closed my eyes.

“Chris, why?” Tristan asked.

“You’re getting on my case?” Chris asked. “She’s as culpable or more culpable than I am.”

“She’s two years younger than you and you’re supposed to be a good role model.”

“I failed at that a while ago, Tristan. And she’s right. We need this, because we can’t take the long road every time. We were going to end up doing this anyway.”

“Why didn’t you just ask?” Sveta asked.

“Because,” Kenzie said. “It’s the kind of thing where it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than ask permission. Plus if I got caught, you all can claim I’m the ditzy tinker kid and you had no idea what I was doing. It’s proof against even lie detector capes.”

There were some out there, in Foresight.

“But I didn’t get caught and now the chances are really slim we get caught. Just like my being on their server. Now that it’s done… I think it’s done, I can tell you guys and you can decide what you want to do with it.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Um. Here.”

She reached for a book at the edge of her workstation, checked it front and back, and tossed it to me.

A novel of the sort that was aimed at young adolescents. It was one I’d read a long time ago, but had largely forgotten. I remembered more of the movie of the same name.